


It's a Cold and It's a Broken Hallelujah

by pollutedstar



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: (happy ending soon I promise), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avocados at Law, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Catholic Guilt, Child Abuse, College, Coming Out, F slur, For the most part, Gay Matt Murdock, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Loss of Faith, M/M, Matt Murdock Angst, Matt Murdock doesn't actually need a hug he needs years of therapy, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Pre-Canon, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Stick's a piece of shit, Support Groups, Symbolism, a lot of religious struggles, i don't think he's actually gay in canon but hey that's what au is for, more tags as the fic continues, q slur happens a couple of times
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22982356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollutedstar/pseuds/pollutedstar
Summary: The Murdock boys, they've got the Devil in 'em. But Matt's scared his Devil isn't violent. (It's just as gut-wrenching.)
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 24
Kudos: 154





	1. Daddy You're The One Who Claimed That He'd Love Me Through the Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Some of this is gonna be out of character because I really just wanted to dive into what Matt's character would be like if he was gay and had been raised the same way. Thanks for y'all who are reading. The chapter title's are all going to be dramatic lmao. This one is from "Heaven Sent" by Parker Millsap. The fic's title itself is from "Hallelujah"

Matt knows what it’s like to have a knife shoved into his body and dragged until there’s almost nothing left to keep his feelings, let alone his organs, inside. He can hear disappointment in the unsteady ticking of people’s hearts. Sometimes in the night he remembers why he didn’t yell when Stick took him into the basement, and he buries his head in his pillow and screams to make up for all the years of silence. He knows pain and rejection like he knows what darkness looks like, or what Foggy smells like, or what Karen’s hair sounds like when it brushes against her shoulders.

And that’s why Foggy can’t understand. Matt Murdock has never left an obsession behind—and honestly, that’s what it was, that’s what the prayer and fasting were, a deep obsession with self-loathing and a Father who hated him—no matter how small, never let anything go without a fight, and for the life of him, all Foggy can do is sputter in response at this pronouncement.

“You’re leaving the church?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Matt mumbles around his split lower lip. It’s just the two of them, so Foggy knows he’s not pretending when he stumbles to his couch, curling up into a fetal position like he wants to keep his heart inside his chest and doesn’t think it’ll stay there on its own.

Foggy follows him, questions filling the distance between them. “You have gone to mass every Sunday you’ve been physically able to since you were born. You lived in a Catholic orphanage. You-”

“‘Be careful of the Murdock boys,’” Matt interrupts. “‘They got the Devil in ‘em.’” His voice is so empty Foggy wonders if the angry vitality the spitfire lawyer has is somehow gushing out of one of his many open wounds right now. “That’s what she always said.” Matt’s hands slip into his hair, a traditional Murdock misery tactic, compulsively punishing himself when God hasn’t, and Foggy reaches for Matt’s hands to stop him, but Matt flinches so violently it freezes Foggy in his tracks.

“I know,” Foggy opts for instead. “You’ve told me.”

“‘They got the Devil in ‘em,’” he repeats. He licks his lip, and Foggy knows it probably stings. “I told Father Lantom that. Way back. I told him I had the Devil in me, and he wanted me in his church anyway. He really thought he could save me, or ease that Catholic guilt, but it’s not something that goes away. Not when you had it beat into you.” He laughs and it’s not funny, but Foggy’s starting to realize Matt has a special laugh for when he’s suffering. It’s like he’s laughing around a nail in his throat.

“Matt,” Foggy tries, his own voice garbled. “You’ve gotta know that’s not true. I mean, you’re as Catholic as they come. And no Devil starts his own law firm because he doesn’t think the corporate world helps the little guys enough.”

Matt’s not convinced, and if he’s not wearing a little crown of thorns, he’s trying to make himself hurt just as much with his nails on his scalp. But his hands suddenly jerk away from his head, moving towards his throat, and Foggy can’t watch his friend scratch his own neck or strangle himself, so even when Matt tries to move away Foggy keeps his hands inside of his, and now Matt’s sobbing, his glasses concealing nothing as his face turns wine red. His desperate breathing has to be opening up stitches somewhere in his body, and Foggy doesn’t need to read heartbeats to know that both of them are terrified of whatever is happening right now.

“If the Devil’s not inside me then why can I _feel_ him?” he begs like Foggy has the answer, and his tone makes Foggy really wish he did. “I feel him in my fucking throat, clawing at me. He wants to be let out, and I can’t _stop_ him.”

“M-”

“And I’m not talking about going out at night, I wish it was just this hot rage, I wish that’s what I felt in my soul. I can _fix_ that, I can push that out, I can starve it and beat it but this isn’t fixable, Foggy, and I can’t keep walking into a room of people who hate me for something I can’t stop.” He gasps, and Foggy reaches a hand towards his hair, and Matt lets him comfort him. “I’m not choosing to go to Hell.”

Foggy has no idea what he means, so Matt opens his mouth like a prophet and lets the bloody story spill out.

* * *

“Nobody can see God, Matty,” his father answered simply.

“Then how do you know he’s real?”

Matt was five and had a lot of questions that scared him, so he asked his dad, who had never been scared of anything and probably never would be.

“Every time I look into your eyes and know that you’re safe, I know God’s real,” his dad told him honestly, patting Matt’s hair. He moved too quickly, though, and a raw cut on his palms that hadn’t healed properly (and hadn’t come from boxing) split again. Matt’s hair turned thick and sticky suddenly, and Jack Murdock jerked away, not wanting to contaminate his son any more.

“Dammit,” he muttered as Matt stood up. A child shouldn’t know how to clean a wound, but people like the Murdocks don’t get to be children. Matt got out the bandages and a washcloth to soak up the blood and rushed back to his dad who was glaring at his hand like it had betrayed him. He reached for his dad’s hand, but he took the supplies from Matt to bandage it himself. Matt sat down and hunched in on himself a little. He had been hoping that he could prove to his dad he could keep his hands steady without liquor, but now he watched in silence and hoped he could prove himself soon. Once the wound was cleaned and wrapped, Jack turned to his son and grinned, but faltered when he remembered that Matt’s hair shouldn’t be that dark of a red.

He led Matt to the bathroom to run cold water through his hair, tilting Matt’s head over the edge of the tub. Matt didn’t shiver because he knew that Hell was fiery and cloying, like a hot summer day when the Devil leaks into more than just the Murdock boys, so this bathtub with a broken water faucet would be the closest to Heaven he’d get until he died.

“Do you go to Hell if you don’t go to church?” he asked, thinking about the broken air conditioning at mass.

“No. But you should always try to go. It’s about respect.”

“Respect for God?”

His father nodded.

“Why do people sin if they’ll go to Hell?”

His father’s hands stopped moving in his hair. Matt looked up at him, the light behind his father’s head echoing off his hair like a halo in old paintings. “Because sometimes they don’t have a choice, Matty. It’s God’s job to judge and no one else’s.”

Matt couldn’t understand the intensity of his father’s words. He couldn’t understand how anyone would choose to sin, or why God would make a world where people had to choose an unrighteous path. He closed his eyes as his dad poured water over his hair.

“I want to meet God,” he declared.

His dad chuckled. “Nobody can see God, Matty.”

* * *

The door slammed behind them, and Matt wanted to flinch even if he knew his dad wouldn’t lay a finger on him. The tension was thick, and Matt thought he could taste the Devil, but it was really just the blood in his mouth.

“A fight? A goddamn fight?” his father growled, tugging him to the kitchen counter to clean him up. Matt tried not to feel proud that his and his dad’s roles were switched. _He_ was the one who had defended himself, today. That’s exactly what his dad was scared of, though.

“Don’t have anything to say about it, huh? I get called down there in the middle of the day, and I’m worried sick thinking you’re not feeling well, and I hear you punched a kid square in the jaw and fought him to the ground?”

“It was a check hook,” Matt argued, knowing it was more trouble than it was worth. “He was already comin’ for me.”

Hearing the term fall from his son’s mouth made Jack stop dead. The washcloth he had in his hands was millimeters from the water, but for a long moment he couldn’t move it the extra space and get it wet. He sighed, a heavy weight falling on his shoulders, and Matt looked away, knowing he had caused it.

“Why’d you do it, Matty? You know your old man’s no example for how to handle this kinda stuff.” He wrung the washcloth out and dabbed it roughly against Matt’s face.

“He called me a name.”

“That’s no reason-”

“I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was bad. He spit it at me, like I’d done something wrong, and I knew I hadn’t, and I just got so…” he trailed off, not wanting to admit to Battlin’ Jack Murdock that he’d been so scared he’d seen red. Was this what his grandma meant about the Devil?

His dad’s voice was as tense as his hands. “What’d he call you?”

He met his dad’s eyes. Neither of them moved. Matt felt like he was in confession, except the priests weren’t supposed to judge. He didn’t know what the word meant, but he knew somehow his dad would.

“He called me ‘queer.’” The word tasted like fire. He wanted a cold shower.

The Devil came to Jack Murdock in fights, came to him in seething rage and whiskey and bad money. He’d always thought he could keep Matt away from it. But maybe the Devil had come in a different form for his son.

He hadn’t moved or spoken, and Matt wanted to cry, wanted to see if pain and fear could make salt water holy. Finally, he murmured, “Am I queer?”

His dad’s eyes moved away from him, and began moving again, sluggish and heavy. “No. You’re not. Don’t ever use that word again, alright? It’s a cruel word. But you ain’t it.”

Matt got down on his knees that night, his hands clinging so tightly together that he wouldn’t have been surprised to pull them apart and see they looked like his dad’s. When he was younger, he used to pray for God to come visit him. Now, he begged God to keep the Devil out of his body.

“I know it’s selfish,” he whispered, careful not to let his dad hear. “I know I’m asking a lot. But I can’t be queer. I can’t have the Devil, not like that. Make me angry, God, make me fight good like my dad. Just don’t make me what those boys thought I was.”

He fumbled into bed with his eyes still closed. He always kept them closed after praying to stop himself from the disappointed pang in his chest that came from realizing God wasn’t there with him. He kept them closed knowing that no one could see God, but maybe God would let Matt hear Him, or smell him, or touch him. He hadn’t yet, but that’s what kept Matt praying.

Jack Murdock waited until Matt was asleep to pray, just like he always did. Every night he prayed for his son. For the Devil not to find him, for Jack’s suffering to be enough, for Matt to get into a good school and become a real man. Jack knew he shouldn’t be drunk when praying, but if wine was as divine as blood, vodka had to be close to holy water somehow. And after looking his son in the eyes and hearing that word on his tongue, he needed something to make the cut around his soul a little less sharp.

“Dear Father,” he attempted around the lump in his throat. He had been hoping drinking would make the words slide out a little easier, but they hardened and stuck like they wanted to choke him. “I’m sorry to even ask this. I love my boy, I really do. And life’s gonna be tough on him. We ain’t got money, and I’m working to keep him in a good school, I really am. He gets bullied. He’s gonna take after me, I can feel it. I know there ain’t nothing wrong with it, but… he can’t be like _that._ Make him as normal as he can be, please. I can’t watch him go through all that. I can’t watch him hurt anymore than he does.”

Unfortunately for Jack Murdock, he wouldn’t have to watch it. Neither would Matt.

* * *

Nobody can see God.

“I can’t see! _I can’t see!”_ he screamed, clutching his father’s arms so hard he could feel himself drawing blood, but he couldn’t stop.

“It’s okay, don’t touch your eyes Matt, it’s okay-”

He thrashed, trying to shove his dad away and pull him closer at once, and he couldn’t tell what was covering his face, but it burned so bad he wanted to rip his own skin off. His breathing became choking, and he heard his dad yelling but he didn’t know how to respond, and someone was screaming, a little boy, a little boy who was _Matt,_ he realized, and then everything stopped.

The next thing he remembered were the sheets at the hospital. They scratched at his skin like sandpaper, and he tried to stay still so they wouldn’t irritate his skin. All of his senses flooded him, trying to make sense of the darkness. Something rough was covering his eyes, a heart monitor next to him was slowly picking up speed, and the scent of bleach was everywhere. It would have been too much if his hand wasn’t being held by his dad. He didn’t need to see to know his father’s calloused hands, or his cheap cologne, or his heavy breathing.

“Matty, it’s gonna be okay,” his father was whispering, and his father had never lied to him, not once, so why was Matt struggling to believe him?

He lifted the hand that wasn’t holding his dad’s to his face. His eyes were covered in bandages, and he started to pick at them.

“Hey, you can’t do that. The doctors wrapped you up pretty tight for a reason.”

“Dad,” he gasped out, starting to feel something rising in his chest. There was fire here, fire under his skin, fire in his gut that felt like the shot of whiskey he’d had once, and he couldn’t breathe. “Dad can they fix my eyes?” he asked, his voice cracking under the weight of the world.

His dad’s heart lurched, and why did he know that, why could he _hear_ that, why could he hear _everything_ now? There was a patient two rooms down telling her family she was dying, there was a nurse sobbing in the bathroom around the corner and Jesus, the _smells,_ they were so much worse, he’d never smelled this much blood in his life, he hadn’t realized sickness even had a smell but he already knew it intimately, it smelled like terror and churches on Monday nights and he wanted it to all go away so badly.

A doctor rushed in, Matt could hear her, could feel her move the air, and distantly he heard a heart monitor racing and his dad panicking, asking what was wrong but—

Nobody can see God. But Matt Murdock could feel the Devil.

* * *

Once, before she died, before Matt went blind, Jack Murdock’s mother had used the word ‘queer.’ She said it like the boys at school had, like it was sour on her tongue and like God might hate her even for thinking about it.

 _She’s the real Catholic,_ his dad always joked. Matt knew his grandma knew a lot of things, and when she said “God doesn’t want to see those queers like that,” he knew she was right.

“What’s that mean?” he asked, quiet enough his dad couldn’t hear it from the next room over.

“They’re perverts, Matty,” she hissed, shaking her head with a Catholic mix of pity and disgust. “Not something a good boy like you needs to worry about. They take love and spit on it.”

“They hate love?”

“They think love can happen outside a man and a woman.” She pointed her finger at him, and he felt like he was being accused. “God made Himself clear, it’s disgusting. They’ll go to Hell for it.”

“God hates them?” His stomach was falling. Did God hate him because the boys at school had called him that? Is that why He never let Matt see Him?

“‘You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.’ That’s what the Bible says. Couldn’t be any clearer, could it?”

“Ma,” Jack Murdock’s rough voice cut through the conversation. Matt jumped up, away from his grandma, as if he was guilty of her anger by association. “Matt doesn’t need to hear that. God forgives, don’t He?”

“Those who seek penance are forgiven. That’s not what those sinners are doing, they’re marching around-”

“Stop.” Jack took his son’s hand and pulled him towards the kitchen. “He’s young. He doesn’t need to hear about it all.”

“He’s a good boy, Jack. I’m just making sure he isn’t led astray.” She looked right at Matt, into his eyes, and he started to shake. That red fear pulsed through him, and he tightened his grip on his father’s hand. “Murdock boys. They’ve got the Devil in ‘em.”

* * *

She’s long gone, deeper in the ground than Jesus by the time Matt Murdock is forced to wear a suit that feels like a noose and stand still at his father’s grave. A nun from St. Agnes had brought him here and was standing next to him, and she had introduced herself as if he was listening when they’d first met. He senses felt stronger than ever, and he could hear the dirt being tossed on his father’s coffin, taste the liquor on the breath of a man two stones down, smell the grass that had been mowed that very day, and most of all he could feel the loneliness, the complete lack of people to join him in mourning the most important man in the world.

Battlin’ Jack Murdock had been paid to lose that fight. And now he had dignity, but no money and no life to show for it. Six feet of respectable dirt must have been worth it, but Matt didn’t understand. He didn’t want to.

His nightmares at the orphanage are always plagued by the cold, even in the hottest stretches of New York summer.


	2. I Hate You For What You Did And I Miss You Like a Little Kid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For being a Catholic, his years at the orphanage haunt Matt more than any Holy Ghost could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some heavier implied content in this section. Check the end notes for triggers and stay safe.
> 
> Title from the song "Motion Sickness" by Phoebe Bridgers

He asked, “What’s the longest you’ve gone without eating?” and then hit Matt with his cane so hard the boy doubled over. They’d known each other for a handful of days, but Matt already knew better than to complain.

“Two days,” he groaned out, clutching his stomach. It wasn’t instinctual yet, his world on fire, his piece-by-piece picture of his surroundings, so he didn’t expect it when Stick hit him again.

“Ah, come on, kid. Raised dirt poor and you still don’t know how to control your hunger?”

Matt tried to push himself up, but Stick shoved him down with an easy kick. Matt hadn’t fought since he lost his eyesight. He’d craved it, but all the other kids didn’t want to get in trouble for beating up the blind boy. Now that he had someone who wasn’t afraid of hurting him, he regretted begging for it.

“What about sleep? How long have you gone without it?”

The math was quick in his head, but the number was embarrassingly low, so he lied. “25 hours.”

This time the cane hit him so hard he tasted blood in his mouth. He wondered how Jesus felt, chained to that cross, no one there except those who wanted to revel in his suffering.

“I can tell when you’re lying, kid. You’re shit at it. And your heart’s more Catholic than you are.” He didn’t understand why Stick thought it was so funny that he was religious, but the man didn’t seem able to let it go. “Real answer. Now.”

“16,” Matt spit out.

“That’s more like it. We’ll fix that.”

That was the common theme in Matt’s life. He always needed fixing. That was how he’d met Stick in the first place. The nuns had known something was wrong with him in a way that ran deeper than a blind boy who had lost his father. He was always screaming. He screamed at night for his dad, and he screamed during the day, too. He screamed when noises suddenly overwhelmed him, and his father wasn’t there to hold his hands over his ears and pull him close to his chest. He screamed when the sheets scratched his skin so bad he was sure he could feel blood on his arms. He screamed and screamed and screamed, never knowing how to stop or who to stop for.

He never screamed with Stick. In a way, the man did exactly what the nuns wanted.

On the worst nights after training in the basement, he would go back up to his room and throw up, though there wasn’t often anything in his stomach but bile. On good nights with Stick, which were rare and far between, he would fall asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow. Mostly, though, he just laid completely still and completely silent in his own bed once their lessons finished, and thought that if he just toughened up and did better, more good days would come.

Abigail, an angry fifteen-year-old with a pickpocketing habit, noticed when Matt started losing weight. She cornered him once and asked if other kids were stealing his food, promising him she’d stab anyone who fucked with him. He’d laughed so hard and so suddenly he had heard her heart rate pick up. As if he needed protection from twelve-year-old Catholic boys.

“I’m fine,” he assured her, still grinning. He could smell her unease and new perfume, but he tried to concentrate on sounding convincing. Stick had told him that if anyone found out about the two of them, he’d leave, and then Matt would have no one. “Really. No one wants to steal from the blind kid, not even these guys.”

She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her and murmured, “Okay.” She didn’t believe him, but Matt didn’t care. Even if she did say something, no one really listened to orphans anyway. At least, that’s what Stick had told him.

“It’s the adults who can’t find out,” Stick said in the back of his mind as he tapped his cane and returned to his room. 

Stick’s leaving broke Matt to pieces, but he knew how to hide it by then.

* * *

“That Matt kid’s fucked up.”

“Hey, leave him alone. He’s blind.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t mean he’s not a—”

Matt rolled over, yanking his pillow over his head and blocking out the gossip two rooms down. He had been practicing focusing his listening, waiting for a test in the basement that would never come, and he’d tuned into the conversation a few boys who had snuck into each other’s rooms past curfew were having. They were talking about girls in a way that made Matt’s skin crawl, which had led to them talking about the boys who the girls liked, and apparently Matt was one of them.

Pressing his pillow so hard against his face that he struggled to breathe and the scent of his own sweat seeped into his nostrils, he still heard their voices clearly. Nearly a decade and a half into his life and he still hadn’t learned how to ignore the way people talked about him.

“It’s not like it’s not obvious. Don’t know why the girls can’t see it.”

“I don’t know, I don’t think he’s a fag. Too uptight. You’ve seen him at Mass, right?”

“Jackie was practically on top of him at lunch yesterday, and he didn’t even care.”

“Jackie only likes him because he’s blind.”

“She’s an idiot,” one boy muttered, his heart rate picking up almost imperceptibly. Matt’s grip on his pillow loosened.

“Yeah, seriously. I mean, I’d do anything for her, and she goes after that guy?”

The rest of the boys continued their chatter, aimless and hateful, but all Matt could hear suddenly was the nervous heartbeat of one boy. He’d heard that voice before, with a slight New Jersey accent, lower than other boys’ voices. Why couldn’t he place the name? Something starting with B, he thought, but he wasn’t sure and for some inexplicable reason, he needed to be sure.

Even as he tried to remember his name, the gentle heartbeat lulled its way into his ears. Before he realized it, he fell asleep, pillow still slung half-heartedly over his head and the scratchiness of the sheets completely forgotten.

He woke up disoriented, his hearing muffled and a dull smell surrounding him. It took him a moment to realize it was the pillow that he’d fallen asleep with over his head. Abruptly, he remembered the conversation he had overheard the night before and tugged his pillow tighter before chiding himself. Trying to numb his senses as a way to numb the pain was childish. Stick would have been disgusted.

Matt tried not to think about it. Tried not to think about the boy. He failed tremendously. Something about the Jersey accent was sticking with him, clouding his senses, and he didn’t mind it as much as he wanted to. He thought about the boy all the way until confession, and as he shoved his gangly body into the booth, running his hands across the mesh separating him and a man of God, he brought it up.

“Father,” he started, unsure if he was talking to a memory or the man beside him. “Why does God make a world where sin is the only option for some people?”

The man sighed, as though he heard this question too often. Matt couldn’t help feeling small. Without thinking about it, he braced himself for the sensation of his cane being used against him.

“Matthew, there is always a choice when it comes to sin. There are impulses, and those who listen to God’s will and understand Him with complete faith will always choose not to act on those impulses.”

He paused, nipping at his chapped lips. “Everyone feels these impulses?”

Something in his tone was suspicious. He aroused a lot of suspicion during his time at the orphanage. The priest hesitated before answering.

“What kind of impulses do you mean?”

He thought about the kids at school calling him queer. “My grandma—” he tried, but choked.

He thought about praying for God to fix him, because someone like him was broken in just too many ways to be healed without divine intervention. “She used to say—”

He thought about the boy from last night, the sound of his heartbeat. “The Murdock boys—they got the Devil in ‘em. That’s what she’d always say. I think these impulses mean she was right.”

“Are you implying that your sins are not your own fault, but rather some unchangeable force inside you was made wrong? You are not mightier than God’s will. No one is. It is within your power to deny the sinful impulses you’re feeling.”

The fire inside of him burned sharper. He was afraid to touch his own skin, worried he would feel scars from the coals in his veins. Shaking as he walked out of the confessional, Matt realized for the first time in his life that a man of God can be very, very wrong. This was something unchangeable. This was something unfixable.

* * *

Nuns used to be desperate to get him to interact with the other boys. Once he got older, though, and they realized there was something wrong with him, they were happy with his isolation. This was when rumors about the strange little blind boy become rumors about the queer little blind boy, even among those who worked at the orphanage. Matt knew he should be careful, knew that there were places to send broken teen boys, and he didn’t want to be there.

He’d gotten used to the taste of alcohol during hard times with his dad. He knew it was against the rules, but sick comfort was all he had those days. He asked homeless men and women to buy him beer at the store down the street, specifying to get the cheapest stuff they had, and he gave them three times the cost of a six-pack. He wondered if breaking the law and an act of charity balanced each other out in God’s eyes, but he knew there was only one sin he was truly fighting off these days, tooth and nail against his own instincts—his _impulses._ The impulses didn’t leave when he was wasted. Really the reason he loved it so much was because of the way it left his mind foggy.

 _Weak,_ Stick growled into his ear. _Couldn’t handle my training and now you can’t even handle what some pussy Catholic kids dish out. Fucking pathetic._

Stick was always growling in his ear, drunk or sober, awake or asleep, and Matt had grown used to him. He was like a conscious of sorts, one that warned him that if he got too soft he’d get killed. Drinking was getting soft. Crying was getting soft. Coping was getting soft. Matt was, at his core, a soft, bloody disappointment. The heat of his nightmares had become full flames. He woke up choking.

“I hate this shithole,” a boy a couple months younger than he said as he sat next to Matt. “They don’t care about any of us except for the image we put up. As long as we go to Mass and hate ourselves then they can pretend they’re doing their job right.”

“To be fair, that kind of is their job,” Matt sighed, more tired than usual, a little surprised at his own nihilism. Talking about the orphanage this way was certainly akin to talking about a church this way, which was akin to talking about God this way. Matt’s heart thumped nervously, a background noise that he usually forgot until it changed. He heard the swish of the boy’s hair against his shoulders, meaning he must have shifted his head. Matt couldn’t help imagining he was staring.

“I’m Nathan.”

“Gift from God,” Matt said.

“What?”

“That’s what your name means.”

Nathan’s heart hitched, matching Matt’s own beat. “Oh yeah?” He scooted closer, closer than anyone had dared to be in years unless they were beating him or dragging a confession out of him. “Who exactly am I a gift for?”

He needed to be careful. He knew this was dangerous.

Curfew was at nine. Bed checks and lights out were at ten for teenagers. Nathan snuck out sometime at eleven, when Matt had almost convinced himself that it was all a cruel trick and that in the morning he would be black and blue and burned at a stake for the fire inside him.

“Matt,” he murmured carefully, lifting a hand to his cheek once the door locked behind him. He was too gentle. Too unfamiliar. Matt hated it, and he yanked Nathan close to him.

“We don’t have much time,” he reminded him, pretending that was his rush. Nathan didn’t question it.

Matt didn’t expect the first time he got fucked by a boy instead of a man to be in a Catholic orphanage. He didn’t expect to feel anything during it, much less euphoria, much less real connection for the first time in years. This, he realized suddenly and quickly, was soft. The thought felt like a punch to the teeth.

Afterwards, the two of them resting half on top of each other to fit in the small bed meant for only one, Matt had brimstone in his gut. Not the dizzying heat from only minutes before, but hot sweat sticking to him like Saran Wrap. His pulse quickening, he reached below the bed, shaking off Nathan’s arms.

“What are you doing?” he questioned, his voice still sluggish.

Without answering, Matt pried up the loose floorboard where he kept his beer. He uncapped it against the night stand, the pop echoing in his head, and downed half of it in one go. Reaching in for another, he offered it to Nathan.

“Nah, I don’t drink.”

“Too much of a good Catholic boy?” Matt joked, trying to hide the shaking of his hands around his bottle. He slid the board back into place.

“Yeah, something like that.”

Matt heard him sit up, felt his hand against his bare back. He shivered. Nathan’s fingers felt cold against his burning flesh.

“Never figured you’d be the drinking type,” he said into the crook of Matt’s neck.

“Why not?”

“You follow all the rules. All the right ones, anyway.”

Matt’s laugh was strangled as he turned around to face Nathan’s general direction. He hoped the other boy wouldn’t notice how spot on he was at knowing where people are in a room. “I follow all the rules? Where have you been the past half hour?”

“Like I said. The right rules.”

“We don’t get to decide what rules are right. They’re all _rules.”_

Nathan’s hands on him stiffened slightly. “Don’t get all high and mighty on me now, Matt. What’s the point of believing rules that hate us for something we can’t control?”

“Everyone has impulses of sinfulness.”

“You telling me you think everyone’s a fag? Because I got news for you, there aren’t that many of us.”

“Don’t call me that,” he spat.

“Why? You think you aren’t one of us?”

“I don’t know what I am, but I’m not… _that.”_

“No, you’re the good little Catholic boy. Holiness isn’t starvation, you know. It’s not denial.”

“Of course it is! That’s all holiness has ever been. That’s why we fast, it’s why we—”

“Lie to ourselves and pretend we’re queer?”

“We _are.”_

“No we’re not. We’re normal. There’s nothing more normal than two teenagers being into each other. What’s so strange about the two of us?”

“I don’t know,” Matt snapped, running an agitated hand through his hair. “I don’t know, okay, but it’s gotta be something. Something that made us like this, right?”

“Yeah. God.”

“Why would God make us just to condemn us?”

“Exactly.”

Nathan didn’t get it. This wasn’t the work of God. This was the dirty blood of the Murdock Devil through-and-through.

* * *

“Can doing good things balance out the wrong things you’ve done, Father?”

“Faith isn’t an equation. It doesn’t work like that.”

“How does it work? I’m sorry to be blunt, but I feel as though all anyone ever tells me is what faith isn’t, and I just have negative space to work with.”

“Maybe you’ve just ignored the teachings of what it is because it doesn’t fit what you want.”

“I don’t even know what I want it to be. Other than definite.”

“Faith isn’t definite, Matthew. It’s _faith.”_

“Is there something wrong with doubt?”

“Doubt is natural. Faith is what comes out of doubt. What remains when you find trust in God.”

“After doubt there is blind faith.”

“There is nothing more honorable than the faith of those who return to God.”

The only people who praised blind faith were those who could see.

* * *

“Hey Matty, it’s me, Nathan,” he said, pushing the door open. Matt already knew it was Nathan since he entered the hallway, but he didn’t tell him that. He had already exposed so much of himself. Too much of himself, his conscience reminds him. His conscience calls him a couple of names too, just for good measure.

“Don’t call me that. It’s Matt.”

“Right, sorry.” A tense silence hung in the air. Or at least it was tense on Matt’s end; Nathan seemed relaxed. “Any news from colleges?”

“Nothing. How the fuck am I supposed to get into law school if I can’t even get into a basic college?”

“You’ve been studying since you were out of the womb. Don’t be ridiculous. Every college in the state is going to be begging for you. Your essays were brilliant.”

“You didn’t read them.”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Why, because you know I have so many great hardships to write about?”

“No, you dick. Because you’re talented and can get your point across better than anyone I know.”

“You’re only saying that to get into my pants,” he muttered jokingly, knowing they were alone and still feeling terrified. “No one else thinks that.”

“Yeah, you don’t talk to anyone else. I’m the one who actually knows you.”

“You know people hate you, right?” he demanded, a thought that’s been hanging heavily on him for weeks. He had meant to bring it up in a kinder way, but sometimes his tongue needs to taste a match. And he had been getting uncomfortable with the praise.

“...How am I supposed to respond to that?”

“Shit, I don’t know. I just mean people suspect about us.”

“I know.”

“Then what’s the point? Of sticking around? Associating yourself with me?”

Nathan’s heart had never done the startling trick it did after Matt’s words came out of his mouth. Immediately he knew he’d done something wrong, but he didn’t know what. For an awful moment, the room smelled like vanilla ice cream.

“You don’t get it,” Nathan finally said.

“Don’t get what?”

Nathan sighed, and Matt felt the change in the air as he walked over to his bed, standing above him. “Where do you see yourself after this place? Off at college?”

Matt still didn’t understand what he was trying to say. “Well, after college I’ll go to law school—”

“You won’t write, though. To me. Or keep in touch.”

“Why would I?”

He meant it genuinely. Why would Nathan want to stay in contact longer than he had to? What more was Matt than a conveniently placed body?

Nathan didn’t answer for a long time. Matt could smell his sweat, the heat off his body, but it was wrong. This wasn’t the normal way Nathan’s body felt.

“I… Okay. Great. Guess it’s better for this to happen now. You know, before it _mattered,”_ he ground out, his fists clenching. Matt tensed without meaning too, already planning his next move if Nathan hit him. Instead of making a move, though, he started crying. Silently, but Matt could taste the salt in the air. “Fuck you, Murdock. I hope you have a great time off at college. Hope you forget this whole thing ever happened and you settle down with some nice Christian girl and do whatever it is you are supposed to do.”

When Nathan walked out, all Matt could think was that he had nothing to remember him by. No crumpled bracelet or faded jersey. Not even a face, as he’d been careful to memorize the feel of every part of him but the one part he might have become too attached to.

Connections to other people were like addictions in their own way. He threw away all his beer that night, listening to the tinkling of breaking glass. Shattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter where it's stated that Matt was raped as a child, presumably by Stick. It's only mentioned briefly in one sentence, but be careful.


	3. Love, For You, is Larger than the Usual Romantic Love. It’s Like a Religion.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt's heinous sin of love follows him through his college years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got so far without making a Richard Siken reference... damn. Y'all already know what the title is from.
> 
> Also, I didn't go into this intending to have Matt and Foggy end up together, but I think that's where the writing is taking it. If Matt was gay, it would probably happen, so I'm embracing it.

In his first year at college, Matt’s roommate never showed. He was relieved. It made it easier to focus with less smells and noises surrounding him, and the isolation reminded him of the orphanage. It wasn’t a place he really wanted to remember, but it was more familiar than most things on campus.

And the best part of being by himself was that he didn’t have to explain to anyone why he was compulsively incapable of sleeping alone.

He never repeated a mistake, and these boys were no exception, even if they were mistakes with names. He made sure to never get used to their scents or their heartbeats or, God forbid, their faces. It worked well for everyone involved because the ones who came back with Matt never wanted to see him again, muttering things like “I’m not a fag, you know,” or “This is a one time thing,” or “I’m not like you.”

_ You’re not like me, no, _ he would sigh in his head. _ But we’re in the same bed together, and I know how it feels to have your hands on me, I know what it’s like on my knees at your altar. We’re more connected than you’d like to admit. _

Matt never said it, but sometimes he wanted to.

He called them Nathan when they didn’t tell him their names, and they called him their last girlfriends’ names whether they knew his name or not. Eventually he stopped introducing himself. At some point, he didn’t need to. Enough guys knew that if you showed up at Matt Murdock’s door when he was in a fucked up enough mood, he’d let you do anything to him. Matt very rarely denied anyone but himself what they wanted.

He wanted the boys, of course. He wanted them badly. But what he wanted more was someone who knew his name and the color of his eyes under his glasses and the things that made him happy, however rare they were.

Holiness was starvation, though.

There must be something pure in finding a way to feed and still never be full.

Because of the way his nights went, Matt began praying in the morning instead of before he fell asleep. He stopped kneeling by his bed to ask for forgiveness; its scent always reminded him of the sins from the night before. Instead, he sat beneath the cheap air conditioner he had bought secondhand that never really worked, but if he fiddled with the dials enough sometimes it coughed out lukewarm air that took some of the sweat of the city off his skin.

He didn’t ask to be different anymore. He just begged to be able to suppress his desires.

“ O Lord, Jesus Christ, Redeemer and Saviour, forgive my sins, just as You forgave Peter’s denial and those who crucified You,” he started, having long ago memorized every way to beg. “Count not my transgressions, but, rather, my tears of repentance. Remember not my iniquities, but, more especially, my sorrow for the offenses I have committed against You. I long to be true to Your Word, and pray that You will love me and come to make Your dwelling place within me. I promise to give You praise and glory in love and in service all the days of my life .”

* * *

He managed all four years of college without making a single genuine connection. For most it might have been reason for concern, but he felt a deep sense of pride knowing that he’d finally been able to teach himself how to cut off others. The way he loved people was too intense, he had decided. It borderlined heresy. Instead, he threw himself into his studying, trying to find braille versions of his textbooks, recording lectures and listening to them dozens of times, pulling all-nighters and feeling his fiery world slowly dim as he passed out after days without sleep. In some ways, a lot of his training with Stick had prepared him for college perfectly. If he was busy, he’d just skip meals and sleep. 

It was working perfectly. He passed every class with flying colors, avoided parties meticulously, and even during the rough years when he had roommates, he never got to know them. He was the queer blind guy—same as he’d always been. No one wanted to touch him with a ten-foot pole. It didn’t make him happy, but it made his goals easier. No distractions. He was going to be a lawyer and help the people of New York. He was going to live a righteous life and make his father proud of him—as proud as Jack Murdock could be of a son who turned out the way Matt had.

“It’s a cruel word,” his father often said in his mind.  _ “But you ain’t it.” _

He was Catholic, he joked to himself. He was allowed one indulgence.

It wasn’t all that funny.

So he surrounded himself with work during the day and men during night and no one cared about the bags under his eyes or the way his ribs sometimes poked through his shirt. He expected this kind of easy avoidance to last him through law school, too, but his reputation didn’t make its way to Columbia. Or at least it didn’t make its way to Foggy Nelson.

“Goddamnit,” he heard someone groan, frustratedly tapping at laptop keys. He was pretty sure it was coming from his room, so he pushed the door open cautiously.

“Excuse me, is this room 312?” he asked.

“Yeah, who you looking for?” the guy across the room responded, and Matt didn’t need to hear his hair swish to know the moment he looked up to see him. His heart rate nearly doubled. Matt bit down a sigh as he waited for the apology at the word “looking.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“What for?” He shut the door, pushing his cane out in front of him to find his bed even though he could already feel the way the air moved around it, feigning ignorance at his roommate’s reaction to him.

“You’re blind, right?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s what they tell me. I hope that won’t be a problem.”

It was, of course. It was always a problem. People treated him like he was soft, like he didn’t know how to incapacitate someone with a single blow, like he didn’t suffer the worst years of his life in a dingy basement to prove his strength, like he didn’t grow up under the steady and determined hands of a boxer. Being blind was a problem because other people made it into one, which made him a problem.

“Why would it?”

Matt put his duffel bag down on his bed for emphasis.

“Oh!” the man exclaimed. “You’re my roomie!”

As if the heavy smell of weed wasn’t enough to damn this dorm arrangement, Matt had to be paired with the kind of person who said “roomie.”

He crept across the room uncertainly and reached out his hand. “Matt Murdock,” he said stiffly, knowing his name would never cross this man’s mind again after the year ended.

He hopped off his bed and met Matt halfway. “Foggy Nelson.”

Matt didn’t have time to ask about the unusual name, because Foggy let out a small gasp of recognition.

“Wait, Matt Murdock? You’re not from Hell’s Kitchen, are you?”

“Yeah, born and raised.”

“So am I!” He gestured at himself, seemingly unaware that Matt shouldn’t know that he was moving. A sense of comfort jolted in Matt’s gut just from having a piece of home so close. “Yeah, I heard about you when you were a kid. Saving that guy crossing the street?”

_ I can’t see _ his brain screamed, and Matt shrugged it off, trying not to think about the day when he started to truly feel the Devil. “I just did what anyone would have.”

_ “Bullshit,” _ Foggy responded passionately. “You are a hero.”

The hospital staff had told him that. A little boy, newly blind, cycling between screaming fits that scared the doctors and bouts of silence where he refused to talk to anyone but his dad, was often lied to for his own sake. He struggled to believe anyone saw him as something other than a tragic child martyr.

Their words had never affected him. But he couldn’t help but flush at Foggy saying it. “I’m not,” he insisted.

“C’mon, you got your peepers knocked out saving that old dude.”

His face cracked a grin without his permission. “They didn’t get knocked out.”

“Oh, good,” Foggy sighed, relieved. “Because that would be a little freaky. No offense!”

“Please, none taken.” He meant it with a kind of Catholic honesty he rarely used outside of confession. “Most people dance around me like I’m made of glass. I hate that.”

“Yeah, you’re just a guy, right?” Foggy’s tone dropped an octave. “A really, really good-looking guy.”

Matt’s entire body tightened, his mouth grasping for the right way to respond to Foggy’s reaction. How was he supposed to avoid repeated mistakes if temptation was sleeping in the next bed over?

The gentle thud of Foggy’s heart jackhammered as he realized what he’d said. “I mean, girls must love that. The whole wounded handsome duck thing.”

Girls. Of course. Matt chided himself for even thinking he had meant anything else.

_ “You telling me you think everyone’s a fag? Because I got news for you, there aren’t that many of us,” _ Nathan reminded him quietly.

He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to correct Foggy. He didn’t want Foggy to see him the way Matt saw himself. Maybe if his roommate thought he was normal, Matt would start acting like it. 

“Yeah, it’s been known to happen,” he joked, the lie poorly concealed. Foggy didn’t notice.

“This is gonna be awesome!”

“What is?”

“Me, as your roommate! As your wingman. You’re gonna open up a whole caliber of women I’ve only dreamed of. We’re gonna be like Maverick and Goose.”

_ Tell him you’re focusing on studying. Or that you don’t really want to be anything other than people who live in a dorm together. Or just say no. _

He opened his mouth, planning a dozen ways to make Foggy hate him and let the two of them move on from this. Instead what came out was, “Okay.”

Foggy finalized his registration process, proudly proclaiming that he was taking Punjabi, and Matt heard the hitch in his heart and voice when he asked Foggy why he was taking the class.

“It’s spoken by 130 million people, I’d like to know what they’re saying.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“Well yeah, I mean… why else would I learn it?”

Matt, thinking about the recurring theme behind most of his own mistakes, took an educated guess. “I don’t know, a girl maybe?”

“See!” Foggy moved his way down to the end of the bed, and Matt grinned at the proximity without meaning to. “This is what I’m talking about. Me and you, Maverick and Goose. No secrets.”

Considering he’d already broken that rule, Matt thought Foggy might need a reminder that his roommate was far from ideal. There was a very sharp difference between Maverick and Goose and Matt and Foggy, but he couldn’t tell Foggy the biggest one. “Goose died. And he was married.”

Married. That would make Matt Maverick.

“Details,” Foggy shrugged, ignoring Matt’s incredible ability to make anything upsetting if he thought about it long enough.

Somehow Matt found himself agreeing to go get coffee together, and Matt knew this arrangement was not going to be the saving grace of holiness he’d thought.

It was over drinks, Foggy describing the girls around them while holding his latte with a dozen shots and syrups and Matt sipping his black coffee, that Matt finally picked up on the smaller details about Foggy. The sensory things that made him up to Matt. And before he realized it, his hands were clenched around his coffee mug, trying to keep off of Foggy’s face.

Matt found himself making his own version of iconography with Foggy in his mind.

* * *

It turned out Foggy, even straight, was still a temptation only a bed over. It just wasn’t the temptation he had been expecting. Foggy would come back from class with coffee that Matt liked, or would help him find textbooks for classes, or would describe rooms and people in such detail Matt couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. Easier than he’d ever been prepared for, Foggy slipped perfectly into his life until he was so entangled there was no way to cut him off without injuring them both.

The worst part was Matt wasn’t strong enough to push him away, and Foggy wasn’t smart enough to leave.

Matt, painstakingly running his fingertips along his Bible, smelled Foggy before he even turned into their hallway. His nose wrinkled at the offensive cologne his roommate had taken to wearing recently. He was already in a bad enough mood, and he could tell Foggy had brought him one of those frilly lattes from a few blocks off campus that he only goes to when he’s in the mood to splurge. He got to the door, struggling to open it with his full hands, and Matt ground his teeth at the metallic sound that made his teeth ache.

“Matty!” Foggy practically yelled, making Matt’s head hurt worse. “Dude, guess who found a place that sells pumpkin spice well into the dead of winter.”

“You,” Matt snapped, trying to focus on his reading.

Foggy’s mood didn’t even waver. “Hell yeah! And I know you pretend to like your coffee black, but you know that some of us can see, right? You practically salivate every time I order mine, especially with whipped cream, so I got you one.” Excitedly, he rushed to Matt’s bed, holding the cup out in front of him. The pumpkin smell was tempting.

Holiness was starvation.

“Your ten o’clock,” Foggy narrated when Matt didn’t hold out his hand for the drink to be put in. Matt still didn’t twitch after Foggy’s words.

“Thanks, Foggy, but I’m really busy right now.”

“Is that one of your Bibles? Shit, am I interrupting some kind of very important Catholic thing? Am I even allowed to swear around you right now? Whoops, I—”

“Foggy I’ll take the  _ fucking _ drink if you need me to so bad, I’m just trying to get stuff done and it’s hard enough without your Axe body spray clogging the room and you trying to buy me shit that I don’t even need. Just because I like your drink doesn’t mean I should have it, especially when I haven’t even studied for the test at the end of the week.” He abruptly cut himself off by biting his lip angrily, forcing himself not to cry no matter how much his eyes were trying to.

Foggy’s heartbeat increased unsteadily, and then he set Matt’s drink down on his bedside table. “If you need me gone for a bit while you come down from this, that’s fine. Listen though, I’ve seen the way you listen to every lecture on repeat in your headphones, you’re gonna do fine on the test. Trust me.”

And then Foggy left, calmly promising that he’d be back in an hour to check in like it was a simple thing and not the first time someone who walked out on Matt had ever promised to be back. As if Matt hadn’t just lost control of himself in an embarrassingly childish way over his senses and his guilt about not putting his all into this test. As if Matt hadn’t just practically splayed himself in front of his roommate.

Shakily, Matt lifted his hands from Leviticus 18:22.

Foggy came back in exactly an hour, and Matt could smell the soap on him that he’d used to wash off the Axe scent. He felt his eyes prickle again at the fact that Foggy had tried to get rid of the smell.

“Feeling any better?” he asked quietly.

Matt had thought the hour would give him a chance to feel less mortified, but with Foggy in the room everything came rushing back.

“I’m,” he started, his voice trembling, “I’m really sorry I said that, Foggy. I’ve been stressed lately, but that’s really not an excuse. I shouldn’t have jumped on you.”

“Thanks buddy. I get it, really. I didn’t even think about the Axe, like no shit you’d be more sensitive to that kind of thing. Just let me know if something starts to get bad again, okay?”

“Why?” he demanded, sounding more surprised than he’d meant to.

“Because we’re friends, Matt.”

Matt didn’t know how to respond, his hand clutching at the material of his jeans. He opened his mouth in a desperate attempt to express himself, but no words came to him. Foggy, to his credit, didn’t seem to expect Matt to say anything. He sat down on his bed, pulled out his laptop, and let Matt ground himself.

“Foggy,” he finally managed. “Foggy, I’m really bad at this.”

“At what?”

“All of this. Genuinely, I’m horrible at knowing other human beings at this point.”

He shrugged, then told Matt he shrugged, and tried for a joke. “I always assumed it was the Catholicism.”

“It kind of is,” he said, his voice still wavering. “I’m just… I’m trying to say thank you.”

“Don’t. I mean it. This is just what friends do for each other.”

Holiness was starvation. Foggy brought him a latte every day that week.

* * *

Matt hadn’t gotten drunk since he was a teenager, but with Foggy it didn’t feel like he was admitting to being weak and needing his senses numbed. It was just something they did together, another indulgence Matt allowed himself even if he shouldn’t have.

Collapsing on the floor, Foggy stretched out, content.

“Matt. Matt. Do you know how soft our floor is?”

“It’s wood,” Matt countered, sitting down despite his own argument.

“Yeah but it’s like silk wood. It’s like smooth. It’s smooth. Touch it, you should touch it because you like things that are soft.”

“I do  _ not.” _

“You’re a bad liar, you should probably work on that if you’re gonna be a lawyer.”

“I don’t wanna  _ lie, _ I just…” Matt shrugged vaguely, unsure how to finish his sentence.

“I was gonna be a lawyer. Or, no, I was gonna be a butcher. I am going to be a lawyer. I thought I would make more money than a butcher would. Do you know how much it costs to become a lawyer?”

“I have some idea. You know, I’m gonna be a lawyer, too.”

“Obviously. We’re stuck together, Murdock. If I was gonna be a butcher, you would have gonna been a butcher. That’s just how we are. Like. Together.”

“What if I was gonna be a boxer? Would you be like my uh, you know, those things that get you jobs. Those things.”

“Obviously. I’d be in your corner,” Foggy paused, his heart picking up minutely. “That’s boxing, right? Oh God, I bet it’s not boxing and you’re Battlin’ Murdock’s son, I’m an idiot.”

“You’re a lawyer, we already knew you were an idiot.” Matt giggled at his own joke. “We’ll be idiots together. Idiot avocados.”

“Why would you be a boxer?”

“Huh?”

“If you weren’t gonna be a lawyer I assumed you’d be a nun—no, not a nun, like a pope. A priest.”

Matt, sitting drunk on his dorm room floor with the man who tested his ability to deny himself every day, knew something like that was impossible, even if he wanted it. “I wouldn’t be a priest.”

“Yeah.” Foggy snorted at his own joke that he hadn’t made yet. “You have too much sex.”

“Hey, I’ve never kicked my roommate out of the room for an angry woman you have one class with, unlike some people on this floor.”

“Well then you should bring more women back! Are you embarrassed of me?”

Matt laid down beside Foggy so his face didn’t show his reaction to the question. Foggy had lots of theories about why Matt didn’t bring anyone to the dorm, but none of them were right—Foggy wasn’t the one who had something to be embarrassed about.

“I would have been a boxer because of my dad,” he tried instead, answering Foggy’s earlier question to change the topic. “If I hadn’t, you know, been blind.” He gestured vaguely to his glasses.

“Well, yeah but… you just  _ are _ a lawyer. Like. You read Thurgood Marshall for fun. I doubt most of our professors even do that.”

“‘We must dissent from the indifference,’” he started, but his words stuck to his mouth, so he stopped, smiling without really thinking about it. “I don’t know, I just wanted to make my dad proud. And I just want to do the right thing. That’s what we’ve gotta do, right? Defend the people who are innocent.”

“You’re too idealistic for law school,” Foggy murmured, and Matt had no argument. “Your dad’s proud. I know it. Like, the Catholic angels are yelling in my ears right now to tell me.”

Matt shook his head before he thought about it. “You don’t know that.”

“Okay, fine.” Matt felt the air shift next to him as Foggy moved, and based on the way he felt Foggy’s breath against him, he was now facing Matt. “I didn’t actually know him. But like. Imagine not being proud of you. It’s im-fucking-possible.”

Matt bit his tongue, not trusting himself to respond in a way that was coherent. Foggy’s heartbeat stayed steady.

* * *

There was something familiar about being despised. The way Elektra bit at him with her tone was safe the way some people found the smell of crayons and vanilla safe—a reminder of a time in his life that wasn’t necessarily good, but was less complicated. He’d gotten too soft with Foggy, too familiar with his own heartbeat, and he needed a reminder that he could still survive the basement if he had to. So he drank, and he smelled the alcohol on her breath, and he got into the probably stolen car with her anyway.

“Where are we going, gorgeous?” she purred close enough to his ear that he knew she wasn’t watching the road.

“Anywhere you’d like. You’re driving.”

“Oh, don’t be like that. C’mon. Take me somewhere I won’t be bored.”

And it was promising. Everything about this was promising. Maybe if he could mistake thrill for attraction long enough, he might not just walk away from this knowing he hadn’t gone soft, but that he wasn’t the disappointment to his father and his church that he’d always thought he was.

He rattled off an address in Hell’s Kitchen that used to be more familiar than his own home.

The smell of sweat and metal reminded Matt of the better years of his life. It was the nostalgia and echoing roars of cheers and boos during his dad’s fights playing in his memory that brought his guard down. He answered her questions with more honesty than he should have, and then his honesty became physical when she kicked him. Usually he knew when to take a hit—he’d taken plenty in his time. But before he realized it, he dodged her, and the whole room went silent. He couldn’t hear anything but their heartbeats thundering.

“I knew it,” she said, breathless, and how was he supposed to feel anything but adrenaline?

It was freeing. He was finally not hiding. He’d opened up to Foggy, to the men he was in bed with, but none of them saw him fully. None of them saw his practiced fists and his wild breathing from sheer terror that he wouldn’t dodge the next hit. She hit him in the jaw and the taste of blood might as well have been a rebirth.

“You got me,” he laughed, stunned. But not nearly as stunned as when the next punch landed again within seconds. He’d expected her to hesitate.

He relished the opportunity to finally be hurt again.

“Get me back,” she demanded, angry and desperate. He knew the tone. “Get me—”

He went in with all he had. If he was lucky, Foggy wouldn’t ask about the split lip and bruises across his arms in the morning. He cared less and less with every sound of bursting blood vessels. The only times he’d ever had this taste in his mouth was after good nights with Stick, when he proved he was worth the time.

It wasn’t until he was pinned to the ground that he knew this would never be the chance he expected, because as she whispered, “I win,” she pushed her mouth onto his, and his whole body stopped in panic and disgust.

“No,” he growled, shoving her off him and crawling to his feet. “What the fuck was that?”

Her heart stuttered, but her voice didn’t betray her surprise. “Oh, I should have known,” she sighed. “There’s always something.”

She left without another word, and the smell of blood was replaced with vanilla ice cream.

* * *

“Matt, you’re black and blue. I know you don’t need me to defend you or anything, but you disappeared at that party last night, you can’t just act like nothing happened.”

“I was with a woman,” he sighed, bitter and bruised. It wasn’t technically a lie, and he’d asked forgiveness for things far worse than technicalities.

Foggy’s heart skipped a beat.

“What the fuck, did she do this to you?”

“It’s not important, Foggy. I don’t think I’ll be meeting up with her again anytime soon.”

She’d given him exactly what he’d needed: a reminder of what happened when people found out.

* * *

Matt’s blood began thrumming again after the fight with Elektra. He had forgotten what it was like to not care about the Devil coming out.

“ Lord, inflame our hearts and our innermost beings with the fire of Your Holy Spirit, that we may serve You with chaste bodies and pure minds,” he murmured quietly, trying not to wake Foggy. “Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

It was an old prayer the nuns had taught teengers at St. Agnes, one that held a double meaning for Matt. He wanted to stop giving into impulses, he really did. But wanting wasn’t enough, not for Catholics.

Holiness was starvation. He stopped drinking pumpkin spice.

* * *

When Elektra came back, it was like a second chance.

He doubted he would ever be able to achieve the real normalcy he’d been praying for since he was almost seven. But she could drag him along places and show him off on her arm and he could pretend he wasn’t carefully paying attention to the colognes in the room, and then they could beat each other bloody for fun and reminisce about their childhoods, and to the outsiders looking in he could almost pass as a regular person. He often spoke during their fights, replacing confessionals with her fists, but she never revealed more about herself than she had to.

Foggy didn’t like her. A dark, bitter part of Matt was more interested in her because of it. Maybe he’d finally realize that Matt Murdock was damaged goods, a man who would always desperately reach for the light but was dragged down by the innate darkness surrounding him. Foggy deserved better. Which meant Matt deserved worse.

Elektra didn’t dance around him like he was glass. She didn’t dance around glass at all.

“That sounded expensive,” he said, thrilled at the prospect of breaking something like everyone had broken him. She understood him. She understood that, even blind, he hated mirrors, and she understood that a childhood of violence fucked the two of them up in ways that made them a perfect fit.

She threw champagne flutes and he threw wine glasses and then she threw him onto the street. Violence begets violence. He couldn’t kill Sweeney. For the first time in a long time, he knew exactly what his father would have wanted. 

Matt, desperate and stupid, called the one person he loved more than anyone.

It turned out he wasn’t enough for Elektra and was too much for Foggy.

* * *

“I won’t see her again.”

“That’s what you said last time,” Foggy sighed, taking an old shirt he’d poured a water bottle over onto Matt’s face. The scene felt ancient and familiar.

_ It’s a cruel word. _

“She doesn’t want me anymore. She won’t be coming back.”

“There is not a person on this damn planet who doesn’t want Matt Murdock.”

“That’s not true, actually. I keep a list,” he joked, but Foggy’s hand stopped momentarily because they both knew Matt wasn’t lying. This was when Matt had told his father. If the room remained quiet much longer, he might just let everything slip out. Matt couldn’t tell if he was damaged or the best thing he had ever had going for him was.

“I swear to whatever God you pray to, if I’m on that list I’ll buy you so many lattes I won’t be able to afford law school,” he sighed, and Matt wanted to beg for forgiveness and sob from relief, but instead he let Foggy work reverently on his wounds and saved his prayers for later.

What he felt every time Foggy was with him after that was nothing short of devotion.

* * *

He’s not sure who followed who, really, who was the flock and who was the shepherd, but Foggy was right. They were stuck together since the moment they were in the same dorm.

So walking out of Landman & Zack with a file box full of bagels and their futures balanced on nooses felt more like a part of some greater plan than it probably should have. Nelson and Murdock, flying by the seat of their pants and trying to make a change where they could. It would work out. It had to work out. Because Matt had just convinced Foggy to give up everything they’d worked for.

Marshall’s words often rang in his ears, but after hearing them in Foggy’s voice, they brought a new sense of comfort. Thinking about Foggy saying, “We must dissent from the fear,” seconds before walking away from their promised futures in corporate law just to pursue the greater good — it made something in Matt’s gut go up like hellfire. 

“Marshall can change anyone’s mind, I told you,” Matt teased while Foggy and he ate at the cheapest place they could find in Hell’s Kitchen.

“Yeah trust me,” Foggy said around a mouth full of food, “Thurgood Marshall isn’t the one who changed my mind. He’s not the one I’d follow blindfolded into poverty.”

“Foggy, you can’t be blindfolded. Someone has to be the eyes of the operation.”

“I’m the eyes, the looks,  _ and _ most of the brain? Come on, Matt, I can’t carry this firm.”

_ “Most _ of the brain?” Matt demanded, pretending to be offended. “I got through Columbia summa cum lade, I’ll remind you.”

“Yeah, and you’re the one who convinced me to walk out on the best opportunity of our lives, so I get to be most of the brain.”

“Okay, but you’re the one who followed me.”

Foggy paused for full dramatic effect. “Dammit. I hate being friends with a lawyer.”

“Eh, it’s not too bad,” Matt said, fonder than he meant to. He felt Foggy’s face flush a little.

“We should go to Josie’s to celebrate our newly-christened firm. Nowhere but up from here, right?”

“That’s the best part about starting at rock bottom,” Matt grinned.

He meant to go with Foggy to Josie’s. He really did. The way he meant to make his dad proud and suppress his sins and never fall too far into someone that they mattered to you.

But then he heard the little girl’s scream.


	4. Your Body Told Me In a Dream It's Never Been Afraid of Anything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt never expected to have this many secrets. Mostly because he never expected to have people to keep secrets from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I opened the floodgates,,, another Richard Siken quote for the title lmao. From "Detail of the Woods." Also I changed Chapter One and Chapter Two's titles because I found quotes that better fit them! I'm thinking of changing the title of the fic itself as well. It seems too bland, and doesn't encapsulate the story as well as it did in the beginning.

He called it a scream. It felt like a scream to him. But it wasn’t, not really. It was a whimper that he had grown far too familiar with.

There are things you are supposed to do when you are a lawyer and a respectable citizen and grown adult and you overhear child abuse. Throwing up in your bathroom until you can’t breathe and your senses are overwhelmed to the point of delirium is not one of them. Punching a wall hard enough to cut open your knuckles is also not one of them. Matt did both. After hearing it again after all those years, he wasn’t a lawyer and a respectable citizen and a grown adult—he was a child hiding in the basement again, begging someone to hear his silence.

He called who he was supposed to, dialing frantically with shaking fingers. And he prayed, although he knew from experience prayer was useless against this sort of thing. And he waited to the tune of his own fists against a punching bag, fantasizing about things his father had tried to drive him away from.

_You follow all the rules._

Foggy kept trying to rearrange their night at Josie’s, but Matt couldn’t, not until what needed to be done was done. Not until that little girl never lived another second of her life in fear like that. He read Thurgood Marshall again. He refamiliarized himself with statutory rape laws. He tried to block out the sounds of the city, but felt his skin crawl when he was successful.

_You follow all the rules._

None of it worked.

_You follow all the rules._

CPA didn’t have a case. That’s how it worked with men like this. They were too smart, and they kept kids too scared, for anything to happen. Matt heard her cry again and wrapped his fists around his pillow, twisting, waiting for a snap. It didn’t snap, though, just reminded him of the dull crinkling of a child’s bracelet.

_You follow all the rules._

_All the right ones, anyway._

He had missed the smell of blood.

* * *

The glass cut into his shoulder. The foul smell of liquor and blood stuck to his skin even after he showered. His knuckles ached and ached and ached in a way that no ice could stop. For the first time in weeks, he slept without nightmares.

* * *

He wanted to tell Foggy immediately. He wanted to tell him at Josie’s, he wanted to tell him as they drunkenly stumbled down the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, he wanted to tell him when they crashed at each other’s apartments and their smells mingled in a cocktail of unforgiving memories. He wanted. And if Matthew Murdock knew anything, he knew what happened when he wanted.

* * *

Matt’s first instinct when he woke up to someone in his kitchen was to grab the knife he kept under his pillow at all times. Maybe not a very healthy response, but he never claimed to be healthy, just vigilant. Staying pressed into his bed, he tried to yank himself out of his half-awake state of mind to identify the intruder.

It didn’t take long because almost as soon as Matt was awake a familiar voice began a hideous rendition of a song that no one on the planet had heard since 2004.

Grabbing at his glasses on his bedside table, he rolled out of his covers and stumbled into the main room of his apartment.

“Foggy?” he questioned, his mouth struggling with the way his words rarely formed well in the morning. It was a sign of weakness, he chided himself. He should always be ready to wake at a moment’s notice at full capacity. He had trained during nights for a reason.

“Matt!” Surprised, Foggy turned around, his heart rate picking up several notches. “Sorry if I woke you up, I didn’t mean to, should have thought about the singing.”

The pace of his voice matched the accelerated pounding in his chest. Matt could smell his nerves—a strange combination of the citrus deodorant he wore and something unrecognized by Matt. And there was something else, a distinct smell that had become familiar in college: Foggy reeked of sex.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, sliding onto one of the stools in the kitchen.

“Can’t a man just randomly visit his law partner’s house without any preamble and make him breakfast?”

Matt sniffed at the air. “Frozen waffles. A traditional shame food,” he joked, but Foggy’s breathing hitched at the words. Nervously, Matt twisted his hands together.

“Okay, I might have had ulterior motives,” Foggy confessed. The waffles popped out of the toaster. Neither of them reacted.

“I figured as much.”

Distant traffic noises and street discussions and silence from Foggy grated at his ears.

“You can tell me anything, Fogs. Remember? Until death do us part—”

“Ihadsexwithaguylastnight,” he finally rushed out, his heart reaching unprecedented levels of terror while he, if Matt’s sense of smell wasn’t failing him, held down just a little bit of bile.

Matt’s own gut lurched. The smell on Foggy’s person suddenly made him sick. That was the foreign smell. Cologne. _Someone else’s_ cologne.

“Uh, that’s not how I meant to do that,” Foggy nervously continued. “I had like, a whole thing I practiced on the way here.” Matt could tell how anxious he was as he gestured wildly with his hands and didn’t narrate a single movement.

“Foggy,” he said gently, shocked at how steady he could keep his voice. “You didn’t think this would change anything, did you?”

The gesturing stopped completely. “I mean. No. But I thought it might be surprising. I’m a real ladies’ man.”

“Well sure, I’m surprised. Although whether or not you’re a _ladies’ man_ is debatable,” he teased. “It’s new information, yes. Pretty unexpected. But,” he waved his hands in a vague direction between the two of them, “this doesn’t go away because of the unexpected. Hell if anything, this is great. Twice as many opportunities to be your wingman, right?”

Everything inside him cringes at the thought. Playing wingman for Foggy had always been a vaguely uncomfortable experience because of Matt’s innate awkwardness and Foggy’s inability to accurately be Matt’s wingman in return, but now it would be worse. It would be much, much worse. Because ever since Foggy had said, ‘sex with a guy,’ Matt had been picturing himself on his kitchen counter underneath Foggy’s solid weight.

Temptation a bed over in law school. Temptation five feet in front of him now.

But he couldn’t bring himself to feel terrified about what this would mean, because Foggy’s relief was rolling off of him in waves.

“Dude, have I ever told you you’re the best friend in the world?”

“For not being an asshole to you when you came out?”

“It wouldn’t be being an asshole if you needed time to adjust to me being bisexual. I mean, I literally confirmed it last night and then told you right now. I don’t even know if I’d have time to adjust.”

Matt leaned forward, tugging off his glasses in a show of intimacy that left him feeling more naked than the fact that he hadn’t slept with or come out of his room with a shirt on. “We’re family, Fogs. Adjusted or not. That’s not something you can walk away from.”

Which was objectively false. Everyone in Matt’s life had proven that. But he was determined to make it true this time.

* * *

They got an office space. They got their first client (pro bono, of course.) Their little family of two became a little family of three. The lies kept piling up, but so did the good things. Matt tried to convince himself that he could walk the fine line that was only getting finer between his day and night life. After all, he’d been forced to learn balance as a child.

What threatened Nelson and Murdock: Attorneys at Law more than any mask, though, was the fact that Matt’s mind could no longer stop itself from latching onto Foggy in every conceivable way. Especially at night.

Matt had had night terrors since he was a child, which had only gotten worse after he lost his dad and more violent after Stick. But after decades of fear-based insomnia, he had gotten used to waking up cold sweat with a name clawing out of his throat. He knew how to handle his nightmares, because the worst thing a bad dream could do was remind him of the way he’d been torn apart in the past. Fantasies, on the other hand, made him wake up with a sick sense of nausea and dread. Fantasies were all about being put back together.

 _You deserve to be loved,_ his fantasies said.

 _You can be loved without ulterior motives,_ his fantasies said.

 _I love you. I want you,_ his fantasies said.

Matt had always hated lies.

Good nights out always ended with bad nights in. Adrenaline-drunk and his body finally willing to rest, he woke up in the morning with the false memories of familiar hands trailing his skin.

He threw himself into the shower, the water cold enough to sting. It reminded him of a broken faucet in a cheap apartment deep in Hell’s Kitchen.

* * *

“Coward,” Foggy spat out morosely, and that hurt worse than anything the papers were saying about him. “What I wouldn’t give for the chance to rip that corny mask off.”

Matt’s ribs ached from the night before, and he suspected they were bruised, but he refused to do anything about it. The pain grounded him, made him sharper and more focused at the office. And maybe it was a little like the penance he’d never felt he’d properly gotten.

“Then what?” Karen asked derisively.

“I’d punch him. In the face. With my… fisticuffs.”

As funny as Foggy’s tone was, it brought memories surging back. The basement had been feeling closer than usual, and the words reminded him what it was to mix violence and devotion.

Foggy’s grunt of pain as he tossed a baseball around made Matt want to slam his own side into his desk.

That’s what Foggy didn’t understand. Foggy had been _hurt._ Karen and he could have _died._ How was Matt supposed to stay inside pretending to be a docile blind lawyer when he could actually change things?

He can’t help himself from defending the Devil. He realized it might be the first time he’s ever truly wanted the fire in his veins, the red inside of him. And of course, no one else wanted it now that he did.

“You’re bringing us down, Murdock,” Foggy joked before leaving the office, and Matt wanted to make him understand how right he was, but more than anything he wanted him to be wrong.

* * *

The basement was always in Hell’s Kitchen. In the background, the way Matt latched onto Karen and Foggy’s hearts, he constantly listened to its echoes, waiting for training that would never continue. He was aware where it was like it was a part of his body.

How he didn’t recognize Stick was in Hell’s Kitchen until the tapping of his cane snuck up on him in a fight was a goddamn mystery.

Weak and bruised on wet concrete, trying to catch his breath, and Stick standing over him, sighing at the disappointment in front of him. Nostalgic wasn’t the right word, but it would have to do.

(Foggy had once asked him in law school what reminded him of his younger years—he’d said the smell of alcohol to cover up the fact that this was the exact memory that vividly stuck with him.)

“You just gonna lie there all night?”

* * *

The worst part was that he still smelled the same.

* * *

He made himself right at home in Matt’s apartment, and already Matt was thinking about how much bleach he’d have to soak everything in to get rid of the trace he left everywhere.

Stick wandered around, touching whatever he wanted. “You had a woman in here.”

“That’s none of your business,” Matt snapped.

“No need to get so defensive, kid. I know you didn’t fuck her.” His arrogance made Matt’s knuckles clench instinctively. “There’s too much cologne in here, and none of it’s yours. Always had that suspicion.”

“Suspicion?” he growled without meaning to. _“Suspicion?”_

Stick sighed. “All a part of training, Matty. You never got it.”

Matt briefly played with the idea of shoving Stick out the window. Beating him the way he beat the little girl’s father. The sudden violence of his thoughts scared him. He’d spent his teenage years trying to be good enough for Stick to come back, and his young adult years trying to forget about impressing him. Now that Stick was here in front of him, Matt found himself trying to stop himself from wringing the man’s neck.

Stick’s hand reached into the air, distracting Matt. “Silk sheets?”

“Cotton feels like sandpaper on my skin.” His throat clenched around the taste of his own weakness in Stick’s eyes.

“You’d be better off sleeping on real sandpaper than surrounding yourself with all this bullshit.”

“This is my life. And I made something out of it. Without you. That’s the part that really pisses you off, isn’t it?”

“Look, I’m proud of you. I really am. The things you’ve done, what you’ve made of yourself. But this? Surrounding yourself with soft stuff? It isn’t life, it’s death.”

 _Proud._ The word he had wanted desperately for twenty years. Now it just made him want to get rid of Stick faster. 

“Someday those silk sheets are gonna crawl up behind you, wrap themselves around your neck and choke you to death.”

The image made bile rise to his throat.

At least this time he knew how to break out of Stick’s grasp.

* * *

The worst part was the memories those smells brought back.

* * *

Dead. A child was dead and Matt hadn’t been able to stop it. His apartment was in shambles, every part of his body was bleeding or broken, and Stick’s scent was everywhere. He was useless and pathetic and not worth anyone’s time, and he’d already known it with such conviction that he didn’t know why God had needed to remind him. A hand, his own, he registered vaguely, ran through his hair and pulled with all its might. He wanted to forget. He wanted to cry. He wanted to collapse on those silk fucking sheets and sleep until he never felt anything again. He _wanted._

Foggy’s heartbeat crawled into his throat when he opened the door to Matt’s knocking.

“Holy Jesus fucking _Christ_ Matt you look like you’ve been hit by a truck it’s two thirty in the morning what happened what is going on wait lemme—”

“Foggy, it’s nothing. I was mugged,” he groaned out, his lips stinging as he spoke.

His response was monotone with shock at Matt’s indifference. “Dude. You look half-dead.”

“Well I’m not fully dead, so I think I’m fine,” he snapped.

“We have to call the cops—”

“No!” Matt’s breathing hitched, and he hoped his glasses covered the way his eyes were starting to tear up with frustration. “No cops. Please, I’m sorry Fogs, really I just… I can’t sleep,” he confessed, leaning against the door frame as he felt his body almost collapse. “I’m sorry, can I please just… come in?”

Foggy didn’t even hesitate. “Of course. Come on. You look like you need to sit down.”

Matt stumbled his way into the apartment, trying his best to cover up the limp in his leg and the fact that his cane was hitting the floor harder than usual. He had no doubt that Foggy noticed both.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” he mumbled, sitting down on the closest thing that resembled furniture. Luckily, it turned out to be a couch. “At least, I hope I woke you up. I don’t know what you’d be doing wide awake at this time of night.”

“Matt Murdock I do not think you are in any condition to lecture me. Your _face_ is _broken._ What was a blind guy doing out in the middle of the night in Hell’s Kitchen?”

He shrugged in response, listening to Foggy pour a glass of water before joining him on the couch.

“I thought I might have something new to look over with the records in Elena’s apartment. I was going back to the office.”

“It couldn’t have waited until the world was decent? At your eleven o’clock is a glass of water.”

“I just needed to do something,” he tried honestly, reaching for the cup. Foggy’s heart skipped a beat.

“You weren’t kidding about not being able to sleep, huh? As bad as it was in law school?”

“It wasn’t that bad at Columbia. I could usually tough it out.” Pride and blood and water mingled on his tongue.

“You used to have spells where you couldn’t touch anyone and I had to wear scentless deodorant for days. And I didn’t mind, might I add, before your Catholic guilt takes a goddamn swan dive off a building, but buddy, it got pretty bad.”

“I’m stronger than that now.”

Hesitation. Matt numbly realized he’d said the wrong thing, one of those things that make people’s hearts sadly whimper, “Oh, what a poor Catholic orphan. Let’s dote on him because he’s soft and weak and useless.”

“You’re strong as shit, dude,” Foggy said instead, always surprising Matt in the best ways. “And I don’t know what it is that drives you to push yourself like this. I’m just saying, you don’t have to be strong all the time. Come on, I gotta be the brawn every once in a while.”

“Eyes, looks, brain, and brawn? Foggy, what am I even bringing to Nelson and Murdock at this point?” Matt’s tone was lighter, but he knew it sounded false. He downed almost the entire cup in his hand as Foggy fell quiet, and when he finished, he let out a long sigh. He turned, trying not to disturb his injuries, and faced Foggy as much as he could.

He wanted.

Sometimes his dreams weren’t about sex. Sometimes they were even worse—they were about love. They were about being touched without malice for the first time in years.

Once, when they were alone in their dorm together and wasted, Matt had touched Foggy’s face. He had wanted to see him in the way that only he could. Now, Matt’s hands were reliving memories he wanted to be real. Foggy’s breathing hitched when Matt touched his jaw, but he didn’t move. Matt didn’t either. 

“I’m,” he started, thinking of a dozen ways to finish what he was saying and not being able to go through with any of them but the worst one. “I’m sorry,” he sighed, pulling away. “For tonight. Really, I should have just gone back to my place.”

“Matt, I wouldn’t have wanted that,” Foggy argued, his voice a little deeper than usual. “More than marriage, right? Business partners. I want to know when you’re going through a rough patch. I want you, hell or high water.”

“I’m more fucked up than you think,” he murmured before immediately regretting it and tensing up. He clamped his mouth shut before everything came rushing out, a pause of silence falling between them.

“You’re not going to expand on that very bold and dramatic claim?” he asked. Matt shook his head vehemently. “Okay. Okay. I’ve stuck around this long, Matt. I’ll keep sticking around, no matter how damaged you think you are. I’ve watched you put yourself together piece by piece. You don’t wanna talk tonight? That’s fine. I’ll wait.”

* * *

Not even Foggy Nelson could wait forever.

* * *

“What the hell do I know about Matt Murdock?”

 _Everything,_ Matt wanted to say. _Everything that matters. All the things I could tell you that wouldn’t make you leave. And even more than that, now._

The room smelled like blood, like beer. Like vanilla.

* * *

Foggy slept with Marci the night after their fight. Matt knew because he had gone against every order and every rational thought in his head and patrolled the city, starting at the heart of it: Foggy’s apartment. It was empty, and Matt sat on his fire escape for what felt like weeks but was only a few minutes to confirm that he hadn’t been home at all that night.

He knew Foggy well enough that he didn’t need to check Marci’s, but he did anyway. It only made him feel worse, listening to Foggy drink expensive whiskey and knowing what was going to happen. Matt threw himself off the building and into the packed dark.

Claire was disappointed. Everyone was, though.

“You really should get some kind of body armor,” she sighed as she cut the thread of his stitches. The sound of it grinding against his skin made his teeth ache. He almost ripped his silk sheets, trying to feel something that didn’t burn.

“Yeah, I’m thinking you might be right.”

He had a feeling his self-destructive tendencies were going to get much worse.

“He wants me to stop, too,” Matt murmured as she left his bedroom to pack up her things. He followed her and heard her movements hesitate. “The man who was here two nights ago. He wants me to stop doing this.”

“Of course he does. Anyone who doesn’t want to see you dead in a ditch somewhere wants you to stop. This isn’t safe and you know it.”

Matt was too tired to relive yesterday’s argument. Listening to distant police sirens and flinching at screams he knew Claire couldn’t hear, he simply hung his head. “Yeah, I do.”

“I know you’re not going to stop,” she said, sitting down across from him.

“Not until this city is safe from people like Fisk.”

“Which is never.” He bit his lip, fearful that he might agree with her. “It’ll always be something, someone. You know that, right?”

He nodded solemnly.

“You told me you were the man this city needs. I think that was only half true.” She reached out, trailing a finger through his hair, and he let himself briefly revel in the sensation of being cared for, worried over. “I think you’re also the man this city created,” she whispered.

Battlin’ Jack Murdock’s son, born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen, drowned in poverty and then in darkness, orphaned by righteous violence, dragging himself out of the gutter only to dive back in, praying he could save the others he’d left behind. She was right. Hell’s Kitchen had created the Devil.

Matt Murdock was creating a martyr.

* * *

To say that the firm was shaky after Fisk was put behind bars was a gross understatement. They were grieving Ben Urich and Ms. Cardenes and their own family, the little one that had existed in a shitty office space before it had gone up in flames even though it was the only part of the city left untouched. The three of them had to be born again, relearning every step they took towards and away from each other. Matt wondered why Karen and Foggy thought it was worth it, but more frequently he wondered when they would realize it wasn’t.

Foggy invited him to Josie’s sometimes, but they rarely went to each other’s apartments anymore. Matt could mention his time out at night, but only cryptically and never in front of anyone else. Karen was jumpy, and Matt didn’t miss the scent of gunpowder on her fingertips on the nights she came in without any rest. He remembered Karen asking if this is what they were now, three people who didn’t talk to each other. He thought she might still be right.

“Matt, there is literally no way that’s true. Foggy would never throw you out of your own dorm for a one night stand.”

“Oh, trust me, it was not _one_ night,” Matt laughed, leaning back.

“Listen, you two wouldn’t get it. You can’t see her, and you’re straight. She’s just so…”

“Vindictive?” Matt offered as Karen snorted.

“Well if it weren’t for her Fisk wouldn’t be behind bars, so I think you both owe her an apology,” Foggy argued, taking a swig from the glass in front of him. Respectable offices keep expensive whiskey, he had explained to Matt and Karen when he had first brought it in to keep in the kitchen. The whiskey was incredibly cheap and wouldn’t come into Matt’s glass if he was paid next month’s rent, but he hadn’t wanted to spoil Foggy’s fun.

“Fair enough,” Karen conceded. “We owe a lot of people for Nelson and Murdock.”

Quiet fell over them, and Matt, who hadn’t slept properly in weeks, could feel himself drifting off to the lull of Karen and Foggy’s heartbeats. Without meaning to, his eyes slipped closed, and before he realized it Karen was gently shaking his shoulder.

He jolted forward at the touch, and Karen pulled away. “Foggy just left. Let me walk you home,” she offered.

Matt waved her off, unfolding his cane. “I’ll be alright, you don’t have to worry about me falling into a manhole. Foggy’s motherhenning is enough for this firm.”

“Well, maybe I just want to walk you home,” she countered, her heart picking up a little. He wasn’t awake enough to decipher what she could mean, so he agreed, taking her arm as they left the office.

The buzzing of the street lamps and the singing of a young man down the street in his apartment made Matt smile as they began their walk. The streets were quieter than usual with Fisk off them. There would inevitably be a power struggle, someone desperate to climb their way to the top and destroy the lull in the Kitchen, but that night was permitted to simply be content.

“Hey, Matt?” Karen started, her voice a little higher than usual from nerves. Matt cocked his head to acknowledge he heard her. “I know it’s personal, and I know it’s mostly resolved now… but you know that you and Foggy are my family too, right? And I just… what happened? What was bad enough that everything was almost torn apart?”

He could have laughed. There was a reason Ben had worked with her: she was a damn good investigator.

“Karen,” he tried, but she interrupted him.

“Listen, don’t give me that bullshit about me not needing to know or whatever, okay? It was a huge deal. You guys had been friends since college. I know it had to be something big, and I need to know if that could happen again.”

He sighed, leaning more heavily on her than he realized. His exhaustion suddenly had nothing to do with the time of night.

“I was pretty young when my grandma died,” he began, not quite knowing how to explain this to Karen. “But I still remember her. My dad was all about family. We went to Mass with her on Sundays, and we’d usually find sometime in the week to see her. She was a real Catholic.”

“And you aren’t?” she questioned.

His laugh was rough. “No,” he said honestly. “She was the fear of God and His Almighty Wrath kind of Catholic. I’m just the guilty kind. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The point that I’m getting at is that there was this thing she used to tell me all the time. She always had an angry look in her eyes, somewhere between blaming me and pitying me, and she’d say… she’d say, ‘the Murdock boys, they’ve got the Devil in them.’”

Karen stayed silent as he gathered himself to keep going, his throat clenching.

“She was right. I know you didn’t grow up here, but everyone who did knew my dad. Jesus, they knew he could fight like a son of a gun. The thing about the Devil is everyone thinks he’s too powerful to be stopped, but that’s not it. What makes the Devil so damning is that once he sets his eyes on you, no matter how many times you knock him down, he always crawls back to you.” He aggressively reached his hand up to his eyes, not wanting to cry. He was aware of every stitch and ache in his body with sudden clarity. “I got like that, too. There’s… Karen there’s something dark inside of me that I’ll never get out. It was just the first time Foggy ever really saw it. That’s why he was upset. He saw me.”

At this point, they had arrived at Matt’s apartment. Karen stopped walking, but didn’t move away from him. He waited, listening to her deliberate.

“I think we’re all capable of terrible things if we’re put in the wrong situation,” she finally settled on.

He grinned bitterly. “What if you keep putting yourself in those situations, though? At some point it becomes your own damn fault.”

* * *

Matt didn’t mean to overhear their conversation as he walked up the stairs to work, but Karen’s nervous heartbeat had made his ears perk up. She walked across the creaking floorboard into Foggy’s office, closing the door behind her like they weren’t alone.

“Hey, Foggy?” she questioned hesitantly. “You’re into guys, right?”

Matt couldn’t help but laugh along with Foggy’s contagious chuckle. Karen was always respectful about topics like that, nervous she might overstep her bounds in a way she usually didn’t care about.

“Yep, that I am,” Foggy confirmed, and Matt listened to the creak of the floorboards as he leaned back in his chair. Matt’s own footsteps had grown softer without him realizing it, their voices becoming clearer.

“Yeah…” she trailed off, and Matt stopped outside the office to give them the privacy to finish their conversation. Maybe she was trying to set Foggy up. The thought made Matt’s stomach roil, and he crossed himself without thinking about it, trying to get rid of the envy in his bones.

“Do you ever…” Karen tried, then stopped and took a deep breath. Her voice lowered, and Matt tried to ignore the rest of her words since she was clearly trying to keep them private. He couldn’t help the fact that his name made him listen instinctually.

“Do you think Matt might be, too?” she asked.

He shoved the door open loud enough to startle both of them off the topic.

* * *

“Can doing good things balance out the wrong things you’ve done, Father?”

Lantom sat down across from him, pushing a drink in front of him that Matt didn’t touch. He was waiting to be answered by being told that it doesn’t work like that, it being faith and life and the guilt weighing on his shoulders.

Instead, Father Lantom asked in his rough voice, “What wrongs have you done, Matthew?”

“I’ve sinned,” he offered, wanting to skirt the answer as long as he could.

“We’re all sinners. No one person can take on the weight of complete purity.”

“Jesus did,” Matt countered.

“And look where that got him.”

It was probably blasphemous for Father Lantom to even say that, let alone for Matt to chuckle at it, but their relationship had always been unconventional.

“Every day it feels like you come in here and confess to me you’ve done someone wrong, whether it’s God or your father or the law. But every time you feel compelled to keep doing what it is you do. There’s someone calling you to this, isn’t there?”

“This isn’t about what I do at night,” Matt sighed, taking the coffee cup in front of him just to have something to fiddle with. “Well. It’s not about _that_ thing I do at night.”

Father Lantom’s heartbeat picked up, curious and confused. “I know we often speak in riddles, but I’m afraid if you want any advice you’ll have to be a little clearer.”

“My father used to tell me that some people were put in positions where they have to sin. Do you believe that?”

“I do. I don’t think God put them there, though. The sins of some cause misfortune for others, and God has given us the free will to cause that misfortune. But you’re avoiding speaking about what you are actually here for.”

“I’m not trying to.” Pushing his glasses up in an attempt to keep his hands busy, he almost knocked over his own coffee. “Maybe I am. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what? Whether you’re here to confess or ask for advice?”

“Whether or not you’ll ever look at me the same.”

Lantom gives Matt a moment to collect himself.

“I’ve sinned, Father. A lot. And I’m starting to realize… I’m not sure it’s as much of a choice as I’ve tried to convince myself it is.”

The heartbeat across from him picked up. Steadied. Picked up again. Lantom’s swallowing made Matt want to plug his ears and slam his head into a desk like he had when he was overwhelmed as a child.

“Ah,” Lantom finally murmurs. “You mean your homosexuality?”

* * *

Don’t fight. Go to church whenever you can. Don’t get caught up so deep in something that it feels like it’s your whole life. Your old man is no example for how to handle this kind of thing. Get yourself some fancy job in corporate law and make yourself a better man than I was. Never let someone talk down to you. No money is better than dirty money, but any money that’ll keep a family fed is worth it. Don’t blame God for things you can’t understand, just ask for His help guiding you. Don’t let the system, or anybody for that matter, treat you like you’re a risk just because you’re blind. It’s a cruel word. But you ain’t it.

“I’m sorry, Father. I’m sorry, Dad.”

* * *

“How long have you known?” His voice is patient and without disgust. Matt can’t release his breath quite yet.

“Since I was young. Pretty young. I didn’t know until I suddenly very much _knew_ when—” He almost choked himself in an attempt to stop himself from speaking.

“When?” Lantom prompted.

Matt bit the side of his cheek, which was already cut from a few nights ago, to keep himself in check. Hopefully it would explain if any tears fell past the rims of his glasses. “There was. Another boy in the orphanage. I think I… I think I loved him.”

His ribcage opened up, the weight he had been carrying inside himself leaving for the first time in his life. He’d never spoken about this outloud. This was how confession was always supposed to feel, he imagined. This was the release of sin; it was the release of secrecy.

“You’ve believed yourself to be a sinner for that long?”

“We’re all sinners, I thought.”

“Matthew.”

“No,” he said, hoping he would be able to explain coherently the complex way he’d always justified this to himself. “I haven’t considered myself a sinner the whole time. I’ve always known there was the Devil inside me—it just wasn’t violent, I suspected. More a temptation. Not a Devil that walked the Earth, but one who sat inside me and made me walk the Earth with its voice in my head. I only considered myself a sinner when I… um, when I acted on these impulses. I considered myself holy when I denied them. But I’ve always considered myself brimming with the Devil—it’s just a question of whether or not I let it out.”

Heavy breathing in a church was one of the worst sounds Matt could imagine. The heat of the exhales swirled in the room until it was cloying if the person was close enough, and regardless of who was breathing (unless, of course, it was Karen or Foggy) it inevitably evolved into the sound of rattling nails against gravel. Echoing walls and hypersensitivity just made it worse.

“I believe that people are the cause of our own sins,” Father Lanton began eventually, choosing every word with caution. “I do not believe that God makes us sin, just that he allows us to. There is no purpose, at least none that I can see, looking at the tapestry of mankind from behind, to forcing sin onto people. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father,” he murmured, more an exhale than a statement.

“Homosexuality from my understanding is not a choice. It occurs naturally across species and cultures, and it has predated the men and women who now condemn it, and it will continue after them, as well. I do not believe God would create a gene, or a hormone, or whatever it is, that is unchangeable and fixed inside a person and then condemn it. I no more believe homosexuality is a sin than having red hair is a sin. Matthew, I do not ever want you to condemn yourself for this. If there is anything a man like you should not deny himself, it is love.”

Matt is suddenly eleven-years-old again and begging on his knees to be fixed, except this time he is answered. This time he is told that there is nothing to fix.

* * *

“Is it hard to sleep?” one of the nuns asked him when he laid down in bed.

“All the time.”

She sighed, and Matt learned that broken hearts don’t actually beat all that different. “I suppose that makes sense. It must be awfully hard to have an internal clock when you can’t see light.”

That’s not what he had meant.

* * *

He stumbled down from the roof into his apartment in a daze. The throbbing in his right leg drew too much of his attention, and he didn’t realize he wasn’t alone until he heard a familiar cough from his couch. He startled, curling his fists before the scent of Foggy’s cologne hit him.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. They still hadn’t been to each other’s apartments very frequently since Matt’s secrets had bled him dry on the very sofa Foggy was on.

“What aren’t you doing here?” Foggy countered, tired and without any real fight. “It’s two in the morning. I’ve been waiting here since at least eleven.”

Matt took off his cowl, tossing it onto the floor with little care, and started unbuckling his suit. Even in the dead of the night in his well air conditioned apartment, the muggy heat of the Kitchen tracked him everywhere he went. “I’m sorry the city doesn’t sleep with you.”

“Yeah, well, I am too. Maybe if the city slept, you would.”

Awkwardly standing at the end of the stairs, Matt helplessly tried to decide whether to approach Foggy or go to his bedroom and change. The man wouldn’t just be here this late for nothing, but he hadn’t exactly made an attempt to bring up why he had come.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” he offered. “If… if that’s why you’re here. It was a relatively peaceful night.”

“Is that why you have a limp?”

“It’s why I only have a limp, yes.” He sounded more defensive than he meant to, but the conversation helped him decide to get changed, if only to avoid Foggy looking at his scarred chest more than he had to. “If you don’t want to see me after a night out, you should have left when I was already gone.”

“Matt, I _wanted_ to see you. That was the point.”

“Why did you want to see me?”

“I’m not allowed to just want to see you?”

“Foggy, you still haven’t forgiven me,” Matt sighed, cutting through to what they were both trying to avoid. “And I don’t blame you. I fucking lied to you. A lot. For years. And my reasoning doesn’t matter because it still stings like Hell, and I get that. But…”

Foggy tensed. “But what?”

Matt pulled on a shirt silently and walked over to kick the air conditioning up a notch. He hesitated, letting his fingers touch the dials too long.

“Why are you here, really? You don’t come over without a reason anymore.”

Foggy’s breath hitched a little. “Maybe that’s why. Maybe I’m tired of having to have a reason. Aren’t you, Matty?”

“I’m exhausted,” he confessed.

Matt turned and curled into the couch on the opposite side as Foggy. 

He opened his mouth to tell Matt something, but closed it again. He stuttered on words he hadn’t even spoken yet, but Matt waited to let Foggy understand what he was trying to say.

“I miss you,” he settled on, and Matt knew he wasn’t done. “I keep telling myself I just miss the things from before I found out you had fucking superpowers, but I don’t even know if it’s the superpowers that threw me off. I just never expected you to hide something like that. I miss you, and I’m starting to think I didn’t even know enough of you to miss.”

Matt swallowed thickly. “Foggy, you knew everything.” Matt heard him snort, but he kept going. “You know things I have still never told anyone. Hell, you know things I hadn’t told myself. You know about St. Agnes, and you know about my worst and best memories with my dad, and you know that cotton drives me crazy, and you know all the things that make me weak and you somehow don’t care. You know _me,_ Foggy, I promise, even if you don’t know Daredevil.”

Foggy’s face was heating up, and Matt could tell he was holding back tears. “But Daredevil still _is_ a part of you. Your senses, that whole ‘world on fire’ schtick you were talking about, your training, I want to know all of it. I’m not asking you to bare your soul here. I just… I want to know the things I’ve missed out on. You’re my best friend, Matt.”

His voice was hoarse and shaking as bad as his hands were. He drew in a steadying breath. “Okay,” Matt said, trying not to feel gutted at the very idea of Foggy wanting to know him even after all he’d seen. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything. Tell me things when you’re ready to. Just. Tell me them. Eventually.”

Matt parted his lips, planning to tell him about the way Hell’s Kitchen sounded, planning to wax poetic about the city and the way he could know it, planned to try to explain his senses a little better so Foggy could understand some part of what he was doing. Instead, the words that stumbled out of his mouth were, “I’m gay.”

Matt couldn’t even pick up Foggy’s reaction because the thrumming of his own blood rushed through his ears. He understood now why he had smelled bile on Foggy’s breath when he had come out to Matt.

“Oh. I… I didn’t know.”

“Yeah.” He forced a laugh. “That’s kind of the point of coming out, I hear.”

Then Foggy leaned forward and pulled him into his arms, and Matt let his entire body sag as he settled his jaw on Foggy’s shoulder.

“Thank you for telling me. You’re my best fucking friend in the world. This doesn’t change that.”

Matt, wrapped in arms that demanded and expected nothing of him for the first time since his father had comforted him as a child, let out a heaving sob. Foggy combed a hand through his hair until they both fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the next chapter is going to be the last! This fic has been in my head for a long time, and now my baby's almost complete. I hope the next chapter leaves everyone with a sense of closure and happiness at the ending.


	5. Where is God in a Salsa Bar?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holiness comes in the strangest places, and the times where salvation and God meet are few and far between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay!! So I've decided to make this story six chapters instead of five because I really want to fully round out the plot points and the finer details/symbols/themes I have going on. I'm very excited with the way I'm wrapping this up and hope y'all find it as enjoyable and satisfying as I'm hoping to make it. Thank y'all for commenting, I hope this is as therapeutic a read as it is a project.
> 
> Title of this chapter is a quote from "The Q*eer God" by Marcella Althaus-Reid

Matt woke up with a hand in his hair and the heady smell of home surrounding him. For a moment, he was suspended in time. There was no past to be ashamed of, no future to be afraid of. He existed solely in the arms around him.

It wasn’t until he questioned _why_ there were arms around him that he started to focus. Sitting up abruptly, he realized the body he’d been laying on top of was Foggy. He shifted sleepily at Matt’s movements, reaching out before his hands fell back on his stomach. Foggy curled in on himself a little to make up for the loss of heat, and Matt desperately wanted to fall forward again and bury himself into his arms, but he refused to take advantage of Foggy’s tired touch.

The dull throbbing in his lower leg made itself stubbornly known, and in an attempt to separate himself from his best friend, Matt limped his way to the bathroom, plugging the tub and running hot water. After a fight, his father wouldn’t shower at the gym, even if it was the only place he could depend on warmth. Wanting to get home to Matt as soon as possible, he would wait until he got to their apartment. On the nights when the water wouldn’t heat, which was most nights, he would have to warm cold water in pots on the stove and have a makeshift shower with a ratty washcloth. Matt still soaked his aches out of habit after a night out.

Feeling the steam fill the room, he hiked up his sweatpants and sat on the edge of the tub, letting his legs sink into the water. Matt could hear his muscles as they slowly relaxed, a sound that was disturbing if he thought long enough about it, but he rarely did. Everyday noises like that had long since faded to the background, except on days when he felt particularly unstable.

He probably should be feeling unstable, he reasoned. Last night had been the first time he had ever said the words “I’m gay,” and he had said them to Foggy before falling asleep in his arms. And for some reason, Foggy had stayed even after Matt had passed out. Foggy always stayed, Matt was beginning to realize, and it terrified him. He had never been able to change enough to make anyone stay. He wasn’t _enough._ That was just an intrinsic fact about him, the way that vanilla was a bad smell, Foggy was a lawyer, and Karen made terrible coffee. Not one person had ever looked at Matt Murdock’s face, littered with bruises and scars around his unfocused eyes, and wanted him unchanged.

Humming an old hymn he remembered vaguely and focusing on his leg in the water, he didn’t realize Foggy was awake until he knocked on the bathroom door, startling Matt.

“You in there?” he asked, and Matt made a noise of affirmation.

“Leg was still feeling sore. I’m soaking it,” he explained. “You can come in.”

Foggy took the invitation, opening the door widely and letting all of the steam out of the room. Matt wanted to burrow back into the warmth of Foggy’s chest, but kept his feet firmly planted on the porcelain to avoid embarrassing himself. Foggy sat himself down on the edge of the tub right next to Matt, facing out to avoid getting himself wet. Their shoulders brushed, and the warmth returned to the room.

“Did you boil it on the stove?” Foggy joked, gesturing to the tub. Matt smiled, hoping Foggy understood that he really did know most things about Matt’s life.

“No, this apartment actually has hot water.” He hesitated briefly, rubbing the fabric of his wrinkled sweatpants. “Sometimes it feels weird to call a place where everything functions properly ‘home.’”

“Yeah, I get that,” Foggy sighed. “I feel weird even knowing there are places in Hell’s Kitchen where things function properly. I mean, growing up fixing everything with duct tape and saving up for months for a single repair somehow doesn’t translate to our, uh, fancy new life.”

Matt chuckled. “Yes, the height of luxury: being paid in pies and good will.”

Playfully, Foggy nudged Matt’s shoulder. “Good will and peace on Earth, isn’t that all Catholics want?”

“I’d be awfully happy to make rent, too,” he responded, smiling. For a moment, he listened to their pair of breaths, which dangled in the air dangerously close to each other. He wondered what it would be like to always have Foggy next to him when he was nursing an injury. The dull ache of fantasies started tugging at his gut.

“Have you told anyone else?” Foggy asked, interrupting Matt’s thoughts.

“About… uh, what we talked about last night?” He still struggled to think the word some days, let alone say it aloud again. Foggy nodded.

“Yeah, I’m just. Curious, I guess.”

“I mean, I’ve never properly told someone, no. Kids would try to kick my ass and call me queer back at school, and the nuns never liked me interacting with other boys, and I guess the guys I’ve slept with obviously knew, and Father Lantom figured it out but… I’ve never actually _told_ anyone.” His lungs shuddered out a heavy breath. “If I said it, then it would be real. And I really didn’t want it to be real.”

“Yeah,” Foggy said simply, his own voice a little wet. “Yeah.”

“I wonder a lot if my dad knew. He just wanted me to be good so badly, or to have a better life than him, and I can’t help feeling like I’m not living up to that.”

“Do you ever ask yourself if _you’re_ proud of you?” he asked Matt quietly. He cocked his head up, confused by Foggy’s words. “I hear you saying all the time that you’re worried your dad isn’t proud of you, or God, or the Church, which is important, I get that—I worry all the time about my parents’ approval—but I never hear you doing things for your own sake. I mean, it’s fucking hard not knowing what your dad thought about you being gay. And I’m not an idiot, I know your Catholic upbringing has a huge part in this, too, but I sometimes worry you don’t… care how you view yourself unless it’s through other people’s eyes.”

Matt swallowed harshly. He wanted to demand what the fuck he was supposed to say to that, but he didn’t. Instead he sagged, Foggy’s words taking just a piece of the city off his shoulders, if only for a moment. Matt had never been very good with affection outside of sex, seeing it as a threat or a sign of getting too soft, but Foggy’s naturally clingy tendencies usually made it so Matt didn’t have to worry about that. Now, Matt turned to him and fully embraced his best friend. Foggy wrapped around him as naturally as he had last night, and the water stayed warm with the sense of home. 

* * *

“I used to tell my dad that I wanted to meet God.” He took a long drink of the black coffee in front of him—for some reason, he didn’t feel holy drinking lattes in the church anymore. “He always said that nobody can see Him.”

“Maybe not God directly, but I believe we can see His actions in others.”

“I didn’t want His actions, Father. I wanted His answers.”

“Do you still want to meet Him?”

He grinned, bitter with his blood running hot. “I don’t even know what I’d ask anymore.”

* * *

They were at lunch, eating their way through yesterday’s payment and amiably exchanging half-stories when Matt burst out, “I’m gay.”

Karen choked on her reheated casserole, which she always said was a very ironic payment method considering the firm always had one foot in the grave, trying to make Foggy smile or Matt start a rousing speech about righteousness.

“I’m sorry?” she questioned, her voice a little tight from surprise.

Matt readjusted nervously in his seat, feeling her gaze without having to see it. He had assumed getting it out directly would be the best approach, but the prospect of having to say the words again had him doubting the plan.

Foggy chuckled, taken aback by Matt’s directness but always willing to step in when he was needed. “What’re you sorry for, Page? All the times you tried to hit on him?”

Karen flushed, embarrassed at having been seen through so easily. Matt hadn’t intended to bring up the brief crush she’d had on him when the firm started.

“No, no that’s not…” she sighed, turning towards Matt. “Thank you for telling me. Really.” She reached out towards him, gently patting his shoulder. He actively suppressed his flinch. “I’m glad you trust me with this.”

Foggy must have given her a pointed look, because she quickly removed her hand. Matt smiled, still trembling slightly.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Karen asked patiently in her tone that made it clear he was wearing too many of his emotions plainly on his face.

He shrugged. “I mean, if you’ve got any questions?”

“Oh, I’ve got one,” Foggy piped up. “Are we going to the Flaming Saddles Saloon this weekend now that we’re both out?”

Matt playfully kicked at Foggy’s shin. “Absolutely _not,”_ he groaned. “If I wanted bad sex that would be over with that quickly I’d get a Grindr.”

“Wait, you’ve _been_ to Flaming Saddles?” Karen demanded.

“I’ve been to every gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen at least once.”

Foggy began cleaning up their lunch as he spoke. “And here I was thinking you had no game.”

“You always knew I had game, Fogs. You just didn’t realize why I never used it on women.”

“I guess I know why you never brought anyone back to the dorms at least.”

“No, that was just common decency, which you and Marci did _not_ have.”

“So you’ve known since law school?” Karen asked, interrupting their back and forth. Matt, who had stood up to stretch, shifted his weight uncomfortably.

“Uh, no. Well, yeah… I knew for a while but there’s a difference between knowing it and accepting it? If that makes any sense.”

“Kind of?”

“It’s just… Okay, when I was a kid there was always something weird about me, right? Even before I was blind. I just had a way of saying certain things or walking a certain way that the other kids picked up on. So in a way I always knew there was something wrong with me.” He heard Foggy and Karen’s hearts lurch simultaneously at his phrasing, but he didn’t know what he had said wrong. He hesitated before rushing out the rest. “And then after my dad, I had crushes on a few different guys, and I had a… I don’t know, I guess you could say boyfriend, but we never actually used the word. He knew he was gay, and around then I figured out that I’d never be able to change the fact that I was. So. Yeah. Since I was a teenager I guess?” He gestured broadly, wanting to end the conversation so he didn’t have to smell the pity in the room.

Karen took a long breath. For a moment, Matt hated her for feeling bad for him. He knew it was an awful thing to think, but the anger settled in his gut. The Devil in him hissed at being thought of as soft.

She stood up. “You know what? In celebration, I think I’m gonna grab us all something to drink down the street before our next meeting. Matt, what do you want?”

“Just black coffee is fine,” he said, reaching for his wallet.

“Hey, don’t even try to give me anything. You came out today, it’s my treat, alright?” She left before he could argue, and the weight he’d felt lifting from his shoulders came back with a crushing force. He’d done this all wrong, and he wasn’t sure how.

Foggy came up next to him. “You want me to put my arm on your shoulders?” he asked. He had noticed Matt’s tension when Karen had touched him.

Matt didn’t even bother responding, his knuckles tight on the edge of his desk. The answer was yes. He wanted to bury himself in Foggy and sleep again, but he wasn’t about to show that weakness. “Did I do that wrong?”

“Of course not, Matt.”

“I could taste the salt in the room. Karen was holding back tears.”

“She was holding back tears because you shouldn’t have had to go through that.”

“I was strong enough, Foggy.”

“Yeah. That doesn’t mean you should have had to be, though.”

Matt didn’t respond.

“I’ve had a long time to hear about your past. Karen’s just new to the whole Matt Murdock backstory. It wasn’t anything you did wrong, alright?”

“Okay,” he sighed, his knuckles loosening. He tilted his head in Foggy’s direction. “I don’t want a hug. Or to be touched. At all today.”

It was a lie, but that wasn’t the point. Sometimes he set boundaries just to prove that he could defend them. He never had to, though, because Foggy never pushed them. And sometimes, Matt knew he just needed a reminder that there was someone in his life who would do that.

* * *

After coming out, Matt often took walks to the cemetery where his father was buried, but he never entered the gates. He would stand outside of them, listening to the wind hum past the iron, his hands shoved into his pockets and something unsettled in his gut.

_It’s a cruel word. But you ain’t it._

Once, after patrol and still in costume, he managed to get all the way to the threshold of the cemetery before getting so nauseous he gagged and had to kneel in the grass outside the gates for minutes. Matt knew deep down that Foggy was right. He was dependent on the approval of people who were too gone to ever be proud of him.

As he walked back to his apartment, Matt tried to focus on the case he and Foggy had taken on that morning, but he doubted any of his ideas would be helpful. He was too distracted by the simultaneous pull and repulsion he felt to his father’s grave to remember specific building codes and the extent of what was covered in a rent agreement. He struggled to even work his way through the crowded streets with his normal ease, relying on his cane more than usual. The snippets of conversation he picked up were accidental and distracting, frustrating him more because he knew he should be able to block these kinds of things out easily.

“It doesn’t matter what reasoning he had—that’s part of the trap abusers create. They build up this ideology where they are the true victim, or you are the one who’s in the wrong and caused what’s happening or has happened. They’ll claim you’re not strong enough, that they’re teaching you a lesson, or that you deserve it, when the reality does not reflect that. You are not at fault for the way he manipulated you.”

Matt stopped in the street so abruptly two different people bumped him, including one who said, “Watch it, asshole,” like they were in some kind of cliche noir film, but he didn’t care. The words he had heard from only a block down had sent something through him, and without even considering it he found himself tapping his way to the voice and its soothing tones.

“We often get caught up thinking about the _why_ of our abusers. Why did they start doing it? Why did they choose us? But by doing that, we also ignore that each person is fully in control of his or her own actions. Their justifications are just there to distract you from the fact that what it is being done to you is wrong, and that abusers alone are responsible for their actions. _Especially_ in cases of CSA.”

Matt pushed open the doors of the community center where the man was speaking. He could hear a little under a dozen other voices in the room with him, and Matt easily tracked down where the speaker was. He hadn’t noticed until now, but his own cheeks were hot, and when he reached up to wipe hastily at his eyes, his hand came back wet.

The meeting ended soon after Matt arrived, and as people folded their chairs and filed out of the door, Matt found himself walking into the room. He could hear the steady breathing of the man who had been talking, and he could tell by the way he was cleaning up that he hadn’t noticed Matt.

“Um, hello?” Matt tried, his voice thick. He clenched his cane tightly, unsure of what exactly he was going to say.

The man turned. “Hi!” he said cheerily. “Are you looking for someone?”

“Kind of?” Matt paused. “Do you run the meeting that just ended?”

The air in the room changed. There was something akin to deference in the way he responded to Matt. “Yeah, I do. My name’s Owen.”

“Okay…” Matt rolled his cane between his hands and needlessly adjusted his glasses. He thought he might throw up if he came out and said it. “What, uh… what is the meeting… for?”

“Childhood sexual assault and rape survivors,” he said easily, like the words hadn’t been trying to shove their way past Matt’s teeth for years. “I actually have a flyer in Braille if you’d like it? We meet every Wednesday at six.”

Instinctively, Matt shook his head. “Oh, I’m not—” He cleared his throat, which was becoming uncomfortably tight again.

“I said that for years,” Owen murmured when it was clear Matt wasn’t going to finish. “That it didn’t count. That I was overexaggerating it in my head. That I wasn’t a _survivor_ because that would make me a _victim,_ and I was stronger than that. It’s natural to doubt your own experiences when people around you have convinced you to.”

Matt heard the sound of shuffling papers before Owen approached him, holding a sturdy Braille flyer. He held it out to Matt. “Right in front of you is the little hand-out, if you’d like it. There’s no harm in just taking it, right?”

“Right,” Matt agreed unsteadily, reaching for it and tucking it under his arm. “Sure.”

His cane nervously scraped against the floor. The noise echoed like it would in a church. “What do you even do here?”

“Well, we usually snack for a few minutes before the meeting starts, there’s a table about fifteen steps from the door where we keep food, and then we all sit in chairs in a circle and just… talk, pretty much. Share our week and what we’re struggling with, memories that have surfaced, progress that we’ve made.”

“And that helps?” he asked, unable to keep the doubt out of his voice.

Owen nodded. “It’s like there’s this heavy _thing_ on your chest that you don’t even realize is there until there’s the relief of it being lifted. Just being open about it and hearing that other people have been through it, too? It felt like I could breathe again.”

Matt hummed awkwardly in acknowledgement, unsure of himself. He shuffled his feet momentarily before abruptly turning around with a short, “Bye,” muttered out as he left.

“Hey, wait,” Owen called after him, stopping Matt at the door. “I just…” Matt waited as he floundered for the right words. “I think the worst thing I did after I moved out, away from my abuser, was isolate myself. I was so humiliated that it had happened, like I had any fault in his actions, that I downplayed it constantly to everyone, especially myself. I didn’t want to admit it because that would make it real. I guess… I’m just trying to say… You’re not the only one. I don’t know what you went through, but I know you’re not alone. Abusers aren’t as special and unique as they’d like us to think.”

Owen turned around then, and Matt rushed away. He shoved open the nearest door and found himself breaking down in a community center’s bathroom, clutching the flyer to his chest like he had his father after nightmares as a child.

* * *

Support group for CSA and rape survivors.

Meetings every Wednesday at 6 p.m.

413 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036

New members welcome. We are stronger together.

Matt ran his fingers over the words until his hands were practically raw. He kept it in his briefcase all day, nervous that if he left it somewhere someone would take the only lifeline he had.

“CSA and rape survivors.” Even thinking the words made his hands shake in a way that made him want to reach for his father’s liquor. Taking the flyer may not have been a confession, but it certainly felt like one. Is that what he was? He knew from an objective standpoint that he had been raped, despite his uneasiness at admitting it even in the convoluted chaos of his own mind. But the next logical conclusion to be drawn from that was that Stick had been a rapist. And even after all he’d done, Matt struggled to apply the word to him.

Stick tortured him. The man had taken advantage of a child with nowhere to turn who was spiraling at his own lack of control. Matt still had nightmares about the basement. But rapists didn’t buy ice cream for their victims, okay? Or pat their shoulders gruffly when they did something right.

Well, they did. And Matt knew they did. He just didn’t want to accept it. Because if Stick was a rapist, and Matt had been raped by him, then Matt was a victim. Matt was a Catholic orphan who had learned to fight but not well enough and let himself be manipulated for years. 

If Matt went to this meeting, it would be real. And he really didn’t want it to be real.

* * *

In college, whenever he had been confused or weighed down by the heaviness of a decision, Matt found himself in the pews. Praying or sitting in silence, it didn’t matter. He went because the familiarity of blind faith eased the ache of the unknown just a little.

He doesn’t mean to end up on Foggy’s fire escape in his full Daredevil regalia, but he does, terrifying Foggy once he’s noticed.

“Jesus, Matt,” he hissed, tugging his window open. Matt climbed through inelegantly, his normal fighting grace gone this week. He’d been taking more hits than usual.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Matt muttered, tugging off his cowl and running a hand through his hair.

“No, of course not, you just thought you’d hang outside my window silently until I noticed you, and you assumed that your looming figure in the darkness would not induce an immediate heart attack.”

Facetiously, Matt sniffed the air, pretending to concentrate. “No, you definitely didn’t have a heart attack.”

“I can never tell if you’re joking,” Foggy laughed, and Matt chuckled with him.

Foggy made his way to the kitchen, and Matt followed, sitting on the counter as Foggy looked through his cupboards for something. Within moments of being at the apartment, Matt already found himself settled. The baseline of the world thumped steadily in Foggy’s chest, and Matt knew with certainty that he was safe here. It wasn’t a luxury he took for granted.

The sound of crinkling plastic and the rush of a sweet smell had Matt cocking his head in confusion. Foggy placed what he’d found in Matt’s hand.

“I know that after like… donating blood or whatever, you’re supposed to have sugar. I figured I should stock up in case you came in here with major fucking blood loss or something,” Foggy muttered, his cheeks heating up. Matt realized what Foggy was saying: he had bought the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen cookies.

“I have orange juice, too,” he nervously continued, opening his fridge. Matt was too busy trying to open his mouth without sobbing to respond. “Or water. You gotta stay hydrated if you’re out being a goddamn ninja all night.”

Matt heard the swish of Foggy’s hair as he looked up, and his face must have been baring his soul considering how fast Foggy stopped talking. Matt desperately tried to make a noise that wasn’t a borderline-whine of appreciation from his tight throat, but he couldn’t manage it.

He had never expected Foggy to come back after that night on his living room floor. But he had, their friendship rising from the dead after only days, and every moment since had felt like the miracle of resurrection was surrounding them. Matt had a family who refused to stop choosing him, refused to stop caring about him no matter what he did, refused to abandon him. For a moment, Matt thought not even God could return this kind of devotion to His followers.

“Thank you,” he finally whispered, and Foggy put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“You don’t need to thank me. Just… keep coming home, alright?”

If Matt had it his way, he would return to home forever. For now, he basks in the absolution of Foggy’s touch.

After finishing his cookie and a full glass of water, Matt laid his head on Foggy’s shoulder, not knowing how exhausted he had been until he could finally rest. Foggy put a hand between his shoulder blades, over the Kevlar that Matt still had on.

“Foggy?” Matt said, breaking the rhythm of their breathing.

He hummed sleepily to indicate he was listening.

“No more secrets.”

Foggy stiffened, his heartbeat picking up a little as he nodded. Matt sucked in a steadying breath, clinging to the points of contact he had. He thought about the meeting tomorrow—possibly today, depending on the time—that he still hadn’t fully made a decision about. He thought about Foggy asking if he wanted to be touched. He thought about the taste of chocolate still lingering in his mouth.

“I have something I wanna tell you,” he finally confessed. “But I can’t yet. I’m… trying to work up the nerve.”

For a moment, Foggy hesitated. Then he nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“You’ll tell me when you’re ready, Matt.” Maybe his inhibitions were a little lowered from lack of sleep, because he leaned his mouth into Matt’s hair. “Family doesn’t leave, okay? Not this one.”

* * *

Seven people crowded around the snack table, Matt the awkward eighth standing at the edge of the room, his knuckles white around his cane. Nothing smelled particularly good, and he was too nauseous to eat anyway. The thumping of his blood obscured the other heartbeats in the room, making it more difficult than usual to discern his surroundings properly. He didn’t even realize another person was approaching him until a familiar voice spoke up.

“Hey, I’m glad you came,” Owen said, reaching out his hand. Matt pointedly ignored it until Owen realized his mistake. “Handshake?”

Matt reached out. “I didn’t know if I’d come.”

“Sometimes I think the best decisions aren’t actually the ones we make, they’re just the ones that we go through with.”

“Meeting hasn’t even started and you sound like my priest,” Matt joked, shifting away from the heaviness in Owen’s tone.

“I usually get told I sound like a therapist, but that’s the same thing to a Catholic, right?”

Matt chuckled despite himself. “Close enough. Though my partner tends to disagree.”

Owen didn’t comment on the ambiguity of the title, nodding to himself. After a moment of quiet, he turned back to room and away from Matt.

“Alright, everyone, let’s get settled,” he announced, his voice naturally echoing above everyone else’s. He was the kind of guy who would have floored everyone in a mock trial, not because of research but because of presence. Matt tapped his way to the closest seat, sitting down stiffly. He wanted desperately to hunch in, shrink until no one could look at him even if they wanted to, but he knew it would make him look weak. He held his back straight like he was nailed to the metal folding chair.

“I notice we have a new face here,” Owen started, and Matt found himself glad that he was holding his posture so rigid because he nearly flinched at being addressed. “Do you want to introduce yourself?”

Matt swallowed like there were thorns in his throat, twisting the material of his pants in his hands. “I sure hope you’re talking to me,” he tried lightly, gaining a chuckle from someone to his left. Owen waited patiently for him to continue, so he sighed out, “I’m Matt.”

“Thanks for coming,” a few people said in a disjointed chorus like an AA meeting or a children’s choir. Matt flushed under the attention.

He wondered what they were thanking him for, exactly. He hadn’t done anything that should earn him praise, no matter how formulaic. 

The chair of the woman next to him scraped as she adjusted herself. A man two seats over was nervously tapping his foot, his heart rate loud enough that Matt would be shocked if he was the only one who could hear it. A young woman, too young to have to be there, played with something in her hands and breathed pointedly, like she was reminding herself she could.

Matt realized he already wanted to thank them, too.

It lasted a little over an hour. Matt had promised himself he wouldn’t have to speak, just sit and listen and bear witness.

“Sometimes I think I’m a horrible person for hating him. I just… I’m so _angry_ some days, and I wish I had fought back. Not even to protect myself but to hurt him.”

Foggy had often been scared of the intensity of Matt’s nightmares in law school. Waking up to the sounds of screams wasn’t uncommon, even as Matt tried to find ways to muffle himself at night so he didn’t worry his roommate. But it was when he had what Foggy considered “good nights” that he really scared himself. The nights that Matt slept peacefully were the nights he dreamt of Stick’s blood on his hands.

Nights like his first time out in a mask.

“She called me again. I don’t know how she keeps getting my number, but I just want her to get out of my fucking skin.”

Stick always knew where Matt was. The man had been into his apartment. Even as an adult, a man with a law degree and a double life beating up criminals, Matt found himself choking on an imaginary weight on his throat when he thought too much about his difficulty saying no to his mentor.

“I’m worried he’s the reason I’ll never be normal.”

It took Matt a moment to realize he’d been the one who spoke.

Owen leaned forward at that, and Matt had to force himself not to cross his arms defensively. “What do you mean by ‘normal?’”

“I,” he started, his face heating up and his words more than a little shaky. “I struggle making connections with people. I’m not worried that they’ll hurt me, I’m more afraid that they’ll... enable me. I was a scrawny kid, and I wonder if I had just been _stronger_ then maybe it wouldn’t have happened. I know it’s normal—necessary, whatever, to have friends, but if my friends make me weak then I could just end up in that same place I was in when he…” the word stuck to Matt’s tongue, too acidic to fully leave his mouth. He hesitated before finding an alternative. “When he hurt me. And even just saying this out loud, I can hear how wrong it is, but that doesn’t fix it. And I doubt I’ll ever be able to be normal or healthy again with him constantly barking at me in my head.”

Owen hummed in acknowledgment before he spoke. “Do friends make you weaker or did he just want you isolated?”

The words cut through every one of Matt’s defenses so directly that he couldn’t even open his mouth to respond. His shoulders fell forward as Owen kept speaking.

“You’ve already made a huge step in recognizing that this thought process is unhealthy. Recognizing where that thought process comes from helps, too. If friends make you weak, why didn’t he have wanted you to have them? Why did he keep you away from the world if he was trying to tear you down? Abusers know that the greatest threat to their power is someone showing you how strong you are. And even if that voice is yelling in your head, you ignored it long enough to make it to this meeting. You ignored it long enough to share. It’ll just get quieter with time.”

When the meeting ended soon after Owen responded, Matt didn't get out of his chair. People filed out, a group of three making unnecessary and redundant small talk, and Owen began to clean the room, and Matt stayed frozen in place until his hands were numb from how tightly he was clutching them together. It had started raining during the meeting, and Matt could feel it in his teeth as the sky broke open and let out a flood.

“You want me to call someone for you?” Owen asked, interrupting Matt’s reverie. “That partner you mentioned earlier?”

Matt’s lips tightened. “I don’t want him to know I was here.”

“Alright.”

The squeaking of chairs being folded resumed.

Matt took a deep breath. “How do you know what to say?”

Owen shrugged but didn’t narrate it. “I just say what I need to hear, I guess.” He smiles and Matt hears him exhale a small chuckle. “God helps people who help themselves, right?”

“I don’t know if God helps anyone anymore. I think we’re all just on our own.”

He couldn’t believe the words had come out of his mouth. He couldn’t believe he didn’t take them back.

“We’re never on our own,” Owen says confidently. “Whether God is real or not doesn’t change that.”


End file.
